WHO BUILT THE CITY ON THE SEVERN?
SLAVERY, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND
LANDSCAPES OF LABOR IN EARLY ANNAPOLIS
by
Bethany J. McGlyn
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in American Material Culture.
Spring 2020
© 2020 Bethany J. McGlyn All Rights Reserved
WHO BUILT THE CITY ON THE SEVERN?
SLAVERY, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND
LANDSCAPES OF LABOR IN EARLY ANNAPOLIS
by
Bethany J. McGlyn
Approved: ______Jennifer Van Horn, Ph.D. Professor in charge of thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee
Approved: ______Martin Brückner, Ph.D. Interim Director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture
Approved: ______John A. Pelesko, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
Approved: ______Douglas J. Doren, Ph.D. Interim Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education and Dean of the Graduate College
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I first heard my advisor, Jennifer Van Horn, speak about her research when I was a junior at Towson University. While I was already a lover of all things early
America, her visit to Towson formally introduced me to the study of material culture and to Winterthur’s graduate program. It was my dream to work with Dr. Van Horn, and I feel lucky to have learned from her both in the classroom and while writing this thesis. Her thoughtful comments and editing helped bring my ideas to life, and her support, personally and academically, made this work possible.
Catharine Dann Roeber and Thomas Guiler have been my greatest supporters since the start of my journey at Winterthur. I have learned much from Catharine and
Tom in the classroom, but more in the conversations and experiences we shared over our many road trips, office chats, conferences, and museum visits. Both helped me work through sections of this thesis, and I am grateful for the time they dedicated to helping me despite having their own advisees.
I realize now more than ever how lucky I was to learn from Ritchie Garrison in the year before his retirement. Ritchie provided me with the foundational tools and texts that led me to this project, and his scrupulous editing and detailed comments on my earliest research paper at Winterthur will shape how I write about the material world forever. Gregory Landrey, Chase Markee, and Laura Schmidt worked tirelessly,
iii often behind the scenes, to ensure that my time at Winterthur would be an unforgettable experience. I can’t thank them enough for their dedication to the museum, the university, and to us students.
Leslie Grigsby, Stephanie Delamaire, Emily Guthrie, Josh Lane, Ann Wagner, and Linda Eaton helped me through many questions and ideas during connoisseurship training, and their passion and excitement for the work that they do has been an inspiration. I am most thankful for their assignments that, while varied, forced me to slow down, look closely, and truly appreciate the wonderful objects I’ve been lucky to study at Winterthur.
As a college junior I began an internship with Historic Annapolis that changed my life forever. Janet Hall worked tirelessly to ensure that my internship provided me with every opportunity and experience possible. Pandora Hess, Karen Brown, Glenn
Campbell, and Jean Russo introduced me to the study of early Annapolis. Lisa
Robbins hired me at the conclusion of my internship, which led to a year of laughter and learning with Cathy Schmidt, April Wall, Cara Carside, Jennie Schindler, Robin
Matty, and Jeannette Marxen, all of whom have continued to support me as a scholar and friend.
Many scholars have contributed to the completion of this thesis. Whether by reading drafts, pointing me to sources, or simply listening to me explain my project,
Zara Anishanslin, Gregory Weidman, Wendy Bellion, Martin Brückner, Alexandra
Kirtley, Carroll Van West, Daniel Ackermann, Sarah Wasserman, and Christopher
Kintzel, and Julie Rose provided incredible support. Similarly, funding from CoCo
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Kim and the Decorative Arts Trust allowed for a summer of worry-free thesis travel and research.
At Towson, the lessons of many incredible professors continue to shape my relationship with the past. Alhena Gadotti taught me to read critically, Ben Zajicek taught me to write like a historian, and Nicole Dombrowski Risser taught me to be unapologetically confident in my abilities as a scholar. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Amy Sowder Koch’s class on art and architecture in the ancient world first taught me many of the skills that I use for material culture analysis every day.
Nancy Siegel’s discussion of “Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky” by Benjamin West flung me head-first into the wonderful world of early America. Her infectious enthusiasm and electric personality continue to inspire me in academics and in life.
I offer a special thank you to my classmates—from Winterthur and beyond— for two years of unwavering support. Sophia Zahner, Ian Lazarenko, Douglas Sentz,
Michael Scire, Rebecca Ramsay, Adam Grimes, Carrie Grief, Elizabeth Humphrey,
Katie Fitzgerald, Candice Candeto, Kate Hughes, Allie Cade, Kayli Rideout, Michael
Hartman, Erin Anderson, Cara Caputo, and Kayle Avery all influenced my work and provided much needed relief at stressful times. I’m most thankful for the constant support of James Kelleher and Emily Whitted. When I look back on my time at
Winterthur, I’ll miss the time I spent exploring, laughing, and learning with them the most.
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For the past year, Peter Fedoryk has calmly and critically traveled with me through every research rabbit hole, every incomprehensible draft, and every late-night thought spiral. He has celebrated every one of my successes and picked me up after every failure. His dedication to his own research pushed me through the final days of writing this thesis. Peter, my life is better with you in it.
Christian Koot has gone above and beyond the duties of a mentor and professor and has acted instead as family. Without the countless hours he has dedicated to answering my questions, listening to my complaints, editing my drafts, and easing my anxieties, none of this would have been possible. You have supported me through success and through tragedy, and I can’t thank you enough.
This thesis is dedicated to my grandmother, Louise Valentine, my aunt
Kathleen Harley, and my cousin Ethan Olsen, three loving, thoughtful, and kind people whose lives were cut short as I wrote this thesis. My two years at Winterthur have been marked by academic and professional opportunity and accomplishment, but also by pain and suffering for myself and my family. I often wondered if I would finish what I had so excitedly started, and it is only because of the unwavering love and support of my family, friends, classmates, and professors that I did. I dedicate this thesis to the life and memory of Louise, Kat, and Ethan. I love you and I miss you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii ABSTRACT ...... xi
INTRODUCTION ...... xii
Chapter
1 BUILDING JAMES BRICE’S TOWN HOUSE, 1767-1774 ...... 1
2 SLAVERY AND SHOP PRACTICE, 1770-1790 ...... 32
3 STATE PATRONAGE AND WORK AT THE CAPITOL, 1770-1829 ...... 57
4 CONCLUSION ...... 91
FIGURES ...... 99 REFERENCES ...... 116
Appendix
A IMAGE PERMISSIONS ...... 126
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 Mr. Shaw's Blackman. Attributed to Moses Williams, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; made after 1802. Hollow cut silhouette on paper. Courtesy of the Library Company of Pennsylvania...... 99
Figure 2 The yellow outlined plot contains what were historically lots 94 and 103. The James Brice House still stands here. The yellow star indicates the Maryland State House, and the yellow rectangle indicates the city dock. City of Annapolis Zoning District Map: Zoning Map 52A. Department of Planning and Zoning. City of Annapolis, Maryland. 2016. This Image is in the public domain...... 100
Figure 3 The James Brice House, 42 East Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1767-1774, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-247. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain...... 101
Figure 4 Hammond Harwood House, 19 Maryland Avenue and King George Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1774, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD- 251. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain...... 102
Figure 5 Chase-Lloyd House, 22 Maryland Ave and King George Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1769-1774, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD- 246. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain...... 103
Figure 6 William Paca House, 186 Prince George Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County MD. Built 1763-1765, photograph taken by the author in 2018...... 104
Figure 7 John Ridout House, 120 Duke of Gloucester Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1764-1765, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-91. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain...... 105
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Figure 8 Charles Carroll House, Duke of Gloucester Street and Spa Creek, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1724, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-293. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain...... 106
Figure 9 Spoon, tablespoon. Shop of Alexander Petrie, Charleston, South Carolina; 1742-1760. Silver. 2009.0003 Museum purchase with funds drawn from the Centenary Fund. Image Courtesy of Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library...... 107
Figure 10 Tall case clock. Shops of John Shaw, Archibald Chisholm, and William Faris, Annapolis, Maryland; 1772-1776. Mahogany, mahogany veneer, pine, silver, brass, paint. 2004.08 Historic Annapolis, Inc. Photograph taken by the author in 2019...... 108
Figure 11 Detail, moon dial and engraving, tall case clock. Shops of John Shaw, Archibald Chisholm, and William Faris, Annapolis, Maryland; 1772- 1776. Mahogany, mahogany veneer, pine, silver, brass, paint. 2004.08. Image Courtesy of Historic Annapolis, Inc...... 109
Figure 12 John Shaw label. Printed by Thomas Sparrow and inscribed by Washington Tuck, 1797. Image courtesy of Hammond Harwood House Museum. Permission pending, museum closed due to COVID- 19...... 110
Figure 13 Modern reproduction of Shaw Flag, hanging from the dome of the Maryland State House. Blue, white, and red bunting. Photograph taken by the author in 2018...... 111
Figure 14 Church Circle. Charles Cotton Milbourne, Annapolis, Maryland; 1794. Watercolor. P58, Donated by Zenith Brown. Image Courtesy of Hammond Harwood House...... 112
Figure 15 Lloyd-Dulany House, 162 Conduit Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1770-1780, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-277. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain...... 113
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Figure 16 Senate President’s Armchair. Shop of John Shaw, Annapolis, Maryland; 1797. Mahogany, tulip poplar, and white oak. MSA SC 1545-0748. Photograph by Gavin Ashworth. Image Courtesy of the Maryland State Archives. Permission pending, archives closed due to COVID-19...... 114
Figure 17 Front cover decoration of Governor’s Council Letterbook, Volume 1, Annapolis, Maryland. Sold by George Shaw between 1814 and 1817. Leather. Binding: Special Collections (William Spawn Collection), MSA SC 5797-1-175. Image courtesy of the Maryland State Archives. Permission pending, archives closed due to COVID-19...... 115
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ABSTRACT
In early Annapolis, Maryland, enslaved artisans labored in craft workshops, construction sites, public buildings, and domestic interiors. Despite working with and for the city’s most famous free white artisans, most notably cabinetmaker John Shaw, they are often left out of studies of craft in early Annapolis. This thesis pairs the rich archives associated with white artisans like Shaw with extant objects, buildings, and spaces, to repopulate Annapolis’s landscape of craft with the enslaved artisans whose work built and sustained the city from its height in the 1760s (known by scholars as
Annapolis’s Golden Age) to its decline after the War for Independence. This thesis uses three case studies, the construction of James Brice’s Annapolis town house from
1767-1774, a tall-case clock made in the workshops of cabinetmakers John Shaw and
Archibald Chisholm and clock maker William Faris in the mid 1770s, and the construction and maintenance of the Maryland State House from 1760-1829. By focusing on Annapolis, this thesis explores how local factors influenced the options and choices available to enslaved artisans and those who enslaved them.
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INTRODUCTION
“I have a desire to purchase the negro boy… I have long wanted one”
In October 1756, saddlemaker Nathan Waters traveled from his home in
Maryland’s urban center of Annapolis to the house of his mother and stepfather in the frontier town of Frederick. Waters rode westward for approximately seventy miles— perhaps using a saddle of his own making—on a trip that likely inspired some mix of anticipation, excitement, and anxiety for the upstart artisan. As he neared his destination, Waters may have imagined how drastically his life would soon change.
Indeed, the purpose of his journey would significantly change his social status, his career, and his household. Trailing behind him was Waters’s fifteen-year-old apprentice, Charles Willson Peale, for whom the trip to Frederick would be just as formative. In only the second year of his indenture, which he begrudgingly remembered as “abject servitude,” the young Peale had likely never traveled so far from home, and almost certainly never participated in the kind of “business” for which
Waters brought him to Frederick.1
In addition to the supplies necessary for what would have been about a week- long journey in each direction, Waters and Peale likely rode with a wagon or cart in
1 Charles Willson Peale, Manuscript Fragment of Autobiography, 1790 (Peale-Sellers Papers, American Philosophical Society) quoted in The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family, Volume V, Lillian B. Miller, Sidney Hart, and Toby A. Appel, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 12.
xii tow. They needed the extra space not for what they brought to Frederick, but for whom they would bring home: James, an enslaved boy, and Nell, Hester, and Dinah, enslaved women—all purchased from Waters’s stepfather, Henry Meroney. 2 Waters paid his stepfather a hefty sum of £40 sterling for James, Nell, Hester, and Dinah, as well as the “the Increase,” or any of the enslaved women’s future offspring, evidenced by a surviving deed to which the young Charles Willson Peale stood witness.3 Prior documentation does not indicate whether this was Nathan Waters’s first time acting in slavery’s marketplace, but it might well have been; his move to Annapolis from
Philadelphia in 1750, presumably after completing his own apprenticeship, indicates that this purchase came at an early stage in his career.4 Whether it was his first purchase of enslaved people or not, Waters clearly went on to see the benefits that enslaved labor provided his business and his household. By 1776 Nathan Waters’s household included twelve enslaved individuals: three men, two women, and seven
2 Land Deed Recorded October 22, 1756, Frederick County Land Records (Liber F Folio 79), Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
3 Land Deed, Frederick County Land Records, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
4 Nathan Waters, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, November 14, 1750, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
xiii children—some of them likely “the Increase of the said Negro women” Nell, Hester, and Dinah.5
There is no way to know how a young Charles Willson Peale felt as he traveled with his master to Frederick and then back to Annapolis with the four new enslaved members of their household. Perhaps Peale was grateful for a few weeks away from the saddler’s shop. Perhaps he considered the journey to be just another instance of
“crul usage of [Waters’s] trusty apprentice.”6 Peale—living in his own, temporary state of unfreedom—may have been distressed by the sale of the four enslaved laborers. Perhaps he sympathized with James, the enslaved boy separated from his family to work in the household of Nathan Waters. Peale was most likely intrigued, if not excited, by watching his master purchase slaves. The young Peale did not grow up in a household with enslaved workers, but he knew unfreedom intimately. An indentured servant named Elizabeth Piper appears in the estate inventory of his late father, Charles Peale Senior, and he himself had spent the past two years bound as an apprentice to Nathan Waters.7 In the urban center of Annapolis, Charles Willson Peale
5 Anne Arundel County Colonial Census, 1776, Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery2.msa.maryland.gov/pages/Search.aspx.
6 Peale, Manuscript Fragment in The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale, Miller, Hart, and Appel, eds., 12.
7 “Inventory of the Goods and Chattels of Charles Peale, Kent County, July 17, 1751,” transcribed in The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family, Volume
xiv was unlikely to go a day without interacting in some capacity with enslaved men, women, and children.
Once free from his indenture Charles Willson Peale quickly eschewed his training as a saddler to establish himself as a portrait painter. Peale followed in the footsteps of his former master, however, when he expanded his own household to include Scarborough and Lucy Williams, two enslaved workers reportedly given to him as payment for a local plantation owner’s portrait.8 By 1778, once Peale moved his family to Philadelphia, he wrote wishfully to his younger brother St. George: “I have a desire to purchase the Negro Boy to wait on me, I have long wanted one…”9
Despite enslaving two people already, Peale’s “desire” for an enslaved boy may have come from his journey westward with Nathan Waters in 1756. Peale would have watched as Waters put James to work in the saddler’s shop, sent him on errands around the city, and commanded his labor at home. While Charles Willson also sat powerless to his master, he knew even at a young age the difference between his
I, Lillian B. Miller, Sidney Hart, and Toby A. Appel, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 30.
8 Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, “‘Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles:’ Silhouettes and African American Identity in the Early American Republic,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 149, no. 1 (March 2005): 25.
9 Charles Willson Peale to St. George Peale, January/February 1778, in The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family, Volume I, Lillian B. Miller, Sidney Hart, and Toby A. Appel, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 262-263. Emphasis my own.
xv position as apprentice and that of James. Peale would someday be free, James would not.
While in Annapolis, Peale and the Williamses lived and worked in an ever- growing network of artisans and their slaves. They of course interacted with the household of Nathan Waters, but also Waters’s son-in-law, cabinetmaker Archibald
Chisholm and his two-time business partner, John Shaw, whom both Charles Willson
Peale and his younger brother James worked with between the years of 1768 and
1829. Peale’s native Annapolis and adopted Philadelphia reveal early American
“urban centers as racially diverse, as economically reliant on slave labor, and, importantly, as material testaments to the skills and talents of African bondsmen.”10
No surviving records reveal whether Charles Willson Peale ever bought the enslaved boy whom he “long wanted,” from his brother St. George in 1778, but Scarborough and Lucy had a child of their own, Moses Williams, who remained enslaved in Peale’s
Philadelphia household until twenty-seven years of age.11 Art historian Gwendolyn
DuBois Shaw notes that Moses Williams, like Peale’s seventeen children who “by necessity, were trained to be useful members of [Peale’s] museum’s staff,” learned
10 Clifton Ellis and Rebecca Ginsburg, eds. Slavery in the City: Architecture and Landscapes of Urban Slavery in North America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017), 1.
11 Shaw, “‘Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles,’” 25.
xvi skills like taxidermy, exhibition design, and silhouette-making on a device called the physiognotrace.12
One of the few surviving silhouettes attributed to Moses Williams resides today at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Made with white laid paper on black cardstock and measuring four by five inches in length, it is a small object that has survived among hundreds of similar silhouettes fashioned at Peale’s Philadelphia museum (fig. 1). The silhouette is labeled “Mr. Shaw’s blackman,” a title which, according to David Bindman and Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, “is a name that identifies the subject in relation to his master and his race; it creates his existence solely within the institution of slavery and his skin color.”13 As DuBois Shaw notes, the subject’s physical features give “little indication of his identity,” though a closer look at his clothing indicates livery.14 “Mr. Shaw’s blackman” is remarkable as one of few early silhouettes of Black Americans. Even more remarkable is that, as its title suggests, the
Black sitter was enslaved. The exact identity of Moses Williams’s enslaved sitter remains a mystery, but the Peale family’s Annapolis origins provide the most compelling possibility.
12 Shaw, “‘Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles,’” 25.
13 Shaw, “‘Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles,’” 33.
14 Shaw, “‘Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles’” 33.
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Among the strongest professional relationships Charles Willson Peale built while living and working in Annapolis was his relationship with Scottish-born cabinetmaker John Shaw. Shaw’s first documented encounter with the Peale family came when he worked as a carpenter alongside Peale’s younger brother James on the
Annapolis town house of lawyer and planter James Brice. Even after Charles Willson
Peale’s move to Philadelphia, the two artisans continued to share workshop space, materials, and skills when Peale visited Annapolis.15 Indeed, both Peale and Shaw experienced similar professional success in their respective fields. While John Shaw never reached the heights of Charles Willson Peale’s national acclaim, both men are remembered today as tastemakers, civic leaders, revolutionaries, and, perhaps above all, talented businessmen. Scholars have analyzed the textual, visual, and material archives associated with Charles Willson Peale for decades, studying his roles as artist, politician, father, and, more recently, enslaver.16 Even so, his early journey to
15 For example, Charles Willson Peale attempted to compose a panoramic view of Annapolis in 1788. In his diary, he notes that he worked at “Mr. Shaw’s Shop” for five days constructing his perspective machine. Lu Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, ed. William Voss Elder III and Lu Bartlett (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1983), 19, and Wendy Bellion “‘Extend the Sphere’: Charles Willson Peale’s Panorama of Annapolis,” The Art Bulletin 86, no. 3 (2004).
16 See Shaw, “‘Moses Williams, Cutter of Profiles,’” and Carol Eaton Soltis, The Art of the Peales in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Adaptations and Innovations, (New Haven: Published by Yale University Press for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2017). Similarly, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s reinstallation of the American galleries will explore Peale’s roles as artist and enslaver.
xviii
Frederick with his own master has yet to be mined for meaning. Peale scholars have tended to focus on the artist’s life after his move to Philadelphia, neglecting the influence of Maryland’s social landscape and the network of white artisans, patrons, and their slaves in colonial Annapolis.
Widening our gaze to consider Charles Willson Peale’s Annapolis connections introduces the possibility that “Mr. Shaw’s blackman” was one of the many African
American men enslaved by cabinetmaker John Shaw. If the silhouette, made after
1802, is indeed a representation of a man enslaved by Shaw, it calls attention to the mobility, skill, and hidden labor of enslaved artisans living and working in early
Annapolis. Bound to Annapolis’s foremost cabinetmaker, “Mr. Shaw’s blackman” may have spent the majority of his life working in the cabinetmaking trade, carting shipments of wood and tools from the docks, cleaning sawdust and scraps, fixing and organizing tools, even constructing, finishing, and delivering some of the hundreds of fashionable furnishings and everyday objects made within his enslaver’s shop. If indeed he was an enslaved urban artisan, the silhouette’s subject experienced a level of mobility uncommon among plantation-based bondpeople; enslaved artisans in
Annapolis sometimes traveled with permission to Baltimore and Philadelphia, whether
xix to hire out their own skills, deliver raw materials or finished goods, or visit with friends and relatives on days when their labor was not commanded elsewhere.17
It is not surprising that an artisan enslaved by John Shaw could find himself in
Philadelphia. Like many Annapolitans, John Shaw had ties to Philadelphia and presumably traveled there often, likely with an enslaved manservant or bondman from his shop. Shaw completed orders for furnishings and repairs for members of the
Philadelphia-based Cadwalader family, two of his five sons spent time living in the city, and his work—both artisanal and civic—in Annapolis and the state of Maryland often brought him in close contact with Philadelphia’s political elites.18 Shaw perhaps brought his bondman to Peale’s Philadelphia Museum to have his likeness made. But
“Mr. Shaw’s blackman” may also have sought out Moses Williams independently.
17 Several runaway advertisements indicate that enslaved artisans from Annapolis either traveled regularly or had family or friends away from the city on the eastern shore, in Baltimore, etc. For example, William Stewart, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, October 24, 1800, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers and James Brice, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, December 16, 1797, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
18 For John Shaw’s involvement with the Cadwalader family see Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 16. Two of Shaw’s sons, John Jr. and George, also lived for a time in Philadelphia. John Jr. attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania starting in 1798, and George appears in the city directory as a cabinetmaker from 1785-1791. Dr. John Shaw, Poems by the Late Dr. John Shaw, to which is prefixed a biographical sketch of the author (Philadelphia: Published by Edward Earle, 1810), and Philadelphia City Directory listings for cabinetmaker George Shaw, 1785-1793, transcribed in MESDA Craftsman Database.
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Moses’s parents, Scarborough and Lucy, lived with Charles Willson Peale and his family in Annapolis. Before relocating to Philadelphia, the Williamses undoubtedly lived and worked among other men, women, and children enslaved in the households and workshops of Annapolis’s artisans. Though scholars suggest that Moses Williams was born in Philadelphia, he was likely still familiar with members of his parents’
Annapolis network, enslaved men and women who also likely knew of Moses
Williams’ reputation and accomplishments in Philadelphia. Given Charles Willson
Peale and John Shaw’s relationship, it is safe to assume that the men and women enslaved in their households were at least familiar—if not closely bonded—with one other.
Tax and census records, runaway and sale advertisements, manumissions, wills, and probate inventories are among the surviving records that have allowed me to repopulate the streets and workshops of early Annapolis with enslaved artisans in an effort to both reconstruct and reinterpret the city’s landscapes of labor and craft. These records indicate the extent to which John Shaw—like many other craftspeople in
Annapolis—bought, sold, and traded enslaved people both in and around the city. The
1798 Federal Direct Tax lists six enslaved individuals living in Shaw’s household, the
1800 census lists seven, eight in 1810, four in 1820, and six by his death in 1829.19
19 Annapolis 1798 Federal Direct Tax, Anne Arundel County censuses 1800-1820, in Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/, and Will of John Shaw, Chancery Court Records,
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Records of this type rarely include the names, ages, and professions of the enslaved men and women whose labor they document, but read together and alongside extant objects, buildings, and landscapes, these sources can reveal much about how artisans in Annapolis relied on bondpeople to advance their own careers, and how urban enslaved laborers often practiced highly-skilled trades that afforded them increased levels of mobility throughout the region. No extant records can definitively prove the identity of “Mr. Shaw’s blackman,” but his image stands in for the countless enslaved artisans whose lives and work will be examined in this thesis.
Historiography
My investigation of slavery, labor, and craft in early Annapolis begins in the period scholars have characterized as the city’s “golden age.”20 The golden age of
Annapolis, defined by historians Jean Russo and Lu Bartlett as the “dozen or so years before the Revolution when Annapolis was not only the political capital of the colony but also its social and economic center,” saw “unprecedented prosperity… spent in the city in the form of elegant brick mansions, fine furniture, lavish wardrobes, tall case
Chancery Papers, MSA S5512-7787, Folder #7788, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
20 Jean Russo, “William Faris’s Annapolis,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris: The Daily Life of an Annapolis Silversmith (Baltimore: The Press at the Maryland Historical Society, 2003), 1.
xxii clocks, and silver tableware.”21 Many scholars including Jean Russo, Mark Letzer,
William Voss Elder IIII, Cary Carson, Lorena Walsh, and Lois Carr have studied the material world of golden age Annapolis, primarily concerned with charting changing elite consumer tastes and behaviors.22 Their work has laid a crucial foundation, but has failed to engage with Annapolis in the years during and after the Revolution, during its transformation from “the genteelest town in North America” to a city struggling to survive as Baltimore flourished up the Chesapeake river.23
Studies of enslavement in early Annapolis are similarly limited. Anne
Yentsch’s A Chesapeake Family and their Slaves provides an important analysis of archaeological remains associated with the Calvert family.24 Archaeological fieldwork has illuminated, among other things, the religious and ritual practices of enslaved
21 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 13.
22 Russo, “William Faris’s Annapolis,” in Letzer and Russo, The Diary of William Faris, Elder, “John Shaw’s Annapolis” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, Lois Green Carr and Lorena Walsh, “Changing Life Styles and Consumer Behavior in the Colonial Chesapeake,” in Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert, eds. Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994.
23 Jonathan Boucher, Reminiscences of an American Loyalist 1738-1789 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925), 84.
24 Anne Elizabeth Yentsch, A Chesapeake Family and their Slaves: A Study in Historical Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
xxiii people living in Annapolis.25 More recently, Jessica Millward’s Finding Charity’s
Folk analyzes the legal history of slavery in Maryland through the story of Charity
Folks, a woman enslaved by the Ridout family in Annapolis.26 Though scholars have acknowledged slavery’s existence in Maryland’s capital, there has been no attempt to understand the roles enslaved men and women played in Annapolis’s landscape of craft. Wills, probate inventories, and runaway advertisements associated with craftsmen in Annapolis, many of which have been added to the Museum of Early
Southern Decorative Arts craftsman database, make clear that cabinetmakers, blacksmiths, architects, shipwrights, and coopers, among other professionals, owned enslaved people and that those people often worked in their owners’ trades.
This thesis contributes to a larger effort to increase our knowledge about the lives and skills of enslaved craftsmen. My project builds on foundational work by scholars including John Michael Vlach, Philip Morgan, and Catherine Bishir, and recent efforts by museums and historic sites to interpret the lives and work of enslaved
25 Archaeological Investigations at the James Brice House (18Ap38): A National Historic Landmark Site. Annapolis, Maryland. Report prepared for the Historic Annapolis Foundation, and Paul A. Shackel, Paul R. Mullins and Mark S. Warner, eds. Annapolis Pasts: Historical Archaeology in Annapolis Maryland (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995).
26 Jessica Millward, Finding Charity’s Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women in Maryland, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).
xxiv artisans in early America.27 Exhibitions at Winterthur and the Museum of Early
Southern Decorative Arts have highlighted pieces of furniture, silver, and textiles known or believed to be made by the hands of enslaved artisans.28 The North Carolina
Museum of History hosted an exhibition on free black cabinetmaker Thomas Day, who notably held artisans in bondage himself.29 In their first ever exhibition focused on the southern United States, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will feature the
Edgefield stoneware ceramics made by enslaved potter David Drake.30 These
27 John Michael Vlach, Charleston Blacksmith: The Work of Philip Simmons, (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 1992), John Michael Vlach, “Rooted in Africa, Raised in America: The Traditional Arts and Crafts of African Americans Across Five Centuries,” Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe, National Humanities Center, accessed September 2019 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1609- 1865/essays/africa.htm, Philip Morgan, A Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Low Country (Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 1998), and Catherine Bishir, Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1779-1900 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
28 Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and Department of Art History at the University of Delaware, Truths of the Trade: Slavery and the Winterthur Collection, 2019, online exhibition, http://truthsofthetrade.winterthur.org/, and Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, ‘Black and White All Mix’d Together: The Hidden Legacy of Enslaved Craftsmen, online exhibition, https://mesda.org/exhibit_category/black-and-white/.
29 The North Carolina Museum of History, Behind the Veneer: Thomas Day, Master Cabinetmaker, 2010.
30 A recent press release by the American Wing notes that the museums exhibition on Edgefield, South Carolina stoneware is scheduled for early 2022. American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “The MET Acquires Rare Inscribed Vessel by David
xxv exhibitions are notable for their attempts to recover the work of enslaved artisans, previously overshadowed by traditional historical narratives that associate white early
American craftsmen with ideals of patriotism, entrepreneurship, and natural born talent.
Studies focused on urban slavery and craft demonstrate the importance of place-based investigations. Catherine W. Bishir’s Craftng Lives, Maurie McInnis and
Louis Nelson’s Educated in Tyranny, Mary Thompson’s ‘The Only Unavoidable
Subject of Regret,’ and Lucia Stanton’s Slavery at Monticello foreground the lives and work of enslaved artisans and engage with questions of labor, skill, mobility, and through a focus on a specific location, the importance of place.31 Similarly, Seth
Rockman’s Scraping By traces Baltimore’s diverse workforce of enslaved laborers, indentured servants, free wage-earners, and women to argue that their work was fundamental in shaping the early republic’s market revolution.32 Marla Miller’s Betsy
Drake,” January 28, 2020, https://www.metmuseum.org/press/news/2020/the-met- acquires-rare-inscribed-vessel-by-david-drake.
31 Bishir, Crafting Lives, Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s University, Maurie D. McInnis and Louis P. Nelson, eds, (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019), Mary Thompson, ‘The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret’: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019), and Lucia Stanton, Slavery at Monticello (Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1996).
32 Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Slavery, Wage Labor, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
xxvi
Ross and the Making of America has been a model for reconstructing the lives of female artisans in Philadelphia whose work has been similarly left out of the traditional historical record.33
Many historians have investigated the social and economic histories of plantation slavery in the Chesapeake, including Lorena Walsh in Motives of Honor,
Pleasure, and Profit and Philip D. Morgan in A Slave Counterpoint.34 However,
Annapolis’s urban landscape necessitates a different approach. Clifton Ellis’s chapter
“Close Quarters: Master and Slave Space in Eighteenth-Century Annapolis,” in
Slavery and the City: Architecture and Landscapes of Urban Slavery in North
America, reveals that early Annapolitans—unlike Charlestonians, for example—never constructed purpose-built slave dwellings in the city.35 This chapter has been fundamental to my understanding of how people—enslaved and free—moved throughout the city in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Bernard Herman’s
Town House and Maurie McInnis’s Slaves Waiting for Sale have helped me imagine
33 Marla Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010).
34 Lorena Walsh, Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1707-1763 (Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 2010), and Morgan, A Slave Counterpoint.
35 Clifton Ellis, “Close Quarters: Master and Slave Space in Eighteenth-Century Annapolis,” in Ellis and Ginsburg, eds. Slavery in the City, 71-88.
xxvii the physical world of the early American city and how enslaved people moved within it.36
Slavery scholars have long focused on the importance of place and work for interpreting the lives of the enslaved. Ira Berlin, Philip Morgan, and Walter Johnson, among many others, point to the roles of land and labor in shaping both everyday experiences and broader cultures.37 This thesis builds on their work to argue that the experience of enslavement in Annapolis was fundamentally different than the experience of enslavement on the eastern shore of Maryland or even in Baltimore, as local factors influenced the everyday decisions of enslavers in the city. More recent scholarship by historians focused on slavery including Annette Gordon-Reed, Erica
Armstrong Dunbar, David Waldstreicher, and Daina Ramey Berry have similarly influenced this thesis through their creative use and interpretation of primary source
36 Bernard Herman, Townhouse: Architecture and Material Life in the Early American City, 1780-1830 (Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 2005), and Maurie McInnis, Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
37 Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996) and Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2013).
xxviii records, most notably runaway advertisements, account books and ledgers, and personal correspondence.38
This thesis builds on the methodological and thematic work of the aforementioned scholars to repopulate early Annapolis’s landscape of craft with enslaved artisans. By linking spaces throughout the city including construction sites, artisanal workshops, domestic interiors, and public buildings, I offer a landscape of
Annapolis focused on the everyday experiences of enslaved artisans: where they worked, who they worked with and for, and the places and objects where their labor is visible today. To accomplish this, I focus on John Shaw, early Annapolis’s most famous artisan. Shaw, an enslaver and prolific cabinetmaker, left behind a disproportionately rich archival presence, providing the opportunity to enhance my study of extant objects, buildings, and spaces with tax records, censuses, receipts, and
38 Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008), Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (New York: Atria Books, February 2017), David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005), and Daina Ramey Berry, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2017).
xxix correspondence. By focusing on Shaw I do not uncritically reinforce his legacy, but instead interrogate how his role as an enslaver impacted his career trajectory and community standing, and how the artisans he bound, trained, and sold navigated an environment and experience far different from plantation slavery. While John Shaw’s life and work provide the through-line for this study, I consider him alongside other artisan-enslavers working in his orbit, including but not limited to cabinetmaker
Archibald Chisholm, clockmaker William Faris, and architects William Buckland and
Joseph Clark. In demonstrating the deep entanglements of white, often immigrant craftspeople with enslaved artisans, traditional narratives of luxury, gentility, and consumerism can be enhanced (and complicated) by questions of mobility, skill, and unfreedom.
Each of my three chapters utilizes varied source material to answer specific questions about the nature of slavery, craft, and labor in early Annapolis, beginning with the construction of lawyer James Brice’s Annapolis town house from 1767-1774, moving to the workshops of cabinetmakers John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm and clockmaker William Faris, and ending at the Maryland State House. While each chapter includes a cast of recurring characters, shifting focus from site to site provides opportunities to examine varying source bases, ask different questions, and understand
Annapolis’s landscape of craft as a landscape in motion. Drawing on Dell Upton’s
“white and black landscapes,” Rebecca Ginsburg’s “slave landscapes,” and Stephanie
Camp’s “rival geographies of slavery,” I link primary source records, extant objects,
xxx and sites of production and everyday life to investigate how enslaved artisans shaped and were shaped by the city that they built.39
39 Dell Upton, “White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth Century Virginia,” Places 2, no. 2 (1984): 59-72, Rebecca Ginsburg, “Freedom and the Slave Landscape,” Landscape Journal 26, no. 1 (March 2007): 36-44, and Stephanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
xxxi
Chapter 1
BUILDING JAMES BRICE’S TOWN HOUSE, 1767-1774
“…for the purpose of building a Dwelling House”
ANNAPOLIS, Sept. 25 We have just now received the melancholly News of the Death of JOHN BRICE, Esq; of this City, at the House of Mr. Samuel Hanson, in Charles County, Yesterday Forenoon. He was Chief Justice of the Province, an Alderman of the City, and one of the Judges of Assize on the Western Shore, and Died on the Circuit. By his Death his Family has lost a good Head, as Husband, Father, and Master. His Body is expected in Town this Evening.40 By the time notice of John Brice II’s death reached the Maryland Gazette on
September 25, 1766, many people living in and around the city of Annapolis had likely heard the news. As the announcement posted in the Gazette indicates, Brice’s accomplishments were wide ranging. John Brice II’s political and economic activities and the wealth and land inherited from his late father, John Brice I, a merchant with the London-based Hatley & Company, positioned the Brices to be among the best connected and well-known families in early Annapolis. John Brice II’s fortune enabled him to leave his wife and each of his children with substantial wealth of their own. For his widow, Sarah Frisby, “the Lott of Land I now live on with the dwelling house,” one third of his plantation lands North of the Severn River, and “sole benefit
40 Anne Catherine Green, editor’s column in the Maryland Gazette, September 25, 1766, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers. My own emphasis.
1 and advantage of a Grist Mill.”41 For his eldest son and principal heir, John Brice III, five hundred pounds sterling, “the books which he has on his bookcase belonging to me,” and lands in both Anne Arundel and Cecil counties.42 The pattern continues with sons James, Benedict, and Edmund and daughters Sarah, Ann, Margaretta, and
Elizabeth—each of whom were left with some combination of land, money, material goods, and enslaved people. While Judge John Brice left substantial inheritances to his wife and each of his children, he entrusted his legacy to his second son, James.
Though James Brice, born August 26, 1746 in Annapolis, was John Brice II’s second son, historian Orlando Ridout IV notes that he “occupied a special place in the
Brice family.”43 Because James’s older brother, John Brice III, was sent to England for schooling, James “was raised at home and given the responsibilities and prerogatives traditionally reserved for the first born son.”44 A child of substantial wealth and status, James Brice likely received the best education available to young men in colonial Maryland. But as the oldest son living at home, James Brice’s studies would have extended beyond lessons in literature and history. Perhaps the most
41 Will of John Brice, Prerogative Court Papers (Wills), MSA S538-50, 34:243, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
42 Will of John Brice, MSA S538-50, 34:243, Maryland State Archives.
43 Orlando Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House 1767-1774 (Annapolis: Friends of the Maryland State Archives, January 2013), 7.
44 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 7.
2 important aspect of James’s education was plantation and labor management. Like his father, James needed to be comfortable calculating complex finances across properties and businesses, the family’s grist mill, brickyard, timbering enterprise, and farmlands that likely produced wheat, tobacco, or a combination of both. Additionally, the younger Brice would have watched his father and the plantation overseers and foremen as they hired, supervised, trained, and disciplined an ethnically and culturally diverse group of hired, indentured, and enslaved workers.
While John Brice III benefited from a world-class education in London, his younger brother James learned the intricacies of managing an estate. Aware of the considerable expense of his oldest son’s education abroad, John Brice II increased
James’s share of inheritance. In addition to money, material goods, enslaved people, and plantation lands, John Brice II entrusted a twenty-year-old James Brice with his
“Lott of Land in the City of Annapolis… & also a lott of Land which I bought of
Alexander Black late of London.”45 The city lots, numbered 94 and 103 on a 1718 survey of the city respectively, occupied a prime location (fig. 2). Lot 94, which
“came to me [John Brice II] by descent from my father John Brice [John Brice I],” had passed through the family for nearly sixty years by the time James inherited it.46 John
Brice I would have been impressed by the lot’s close proximity to the docks and the
45 Will of John Brice, MSA S538-50, 34:243, Maryland State Archives.
46 Will of John Brice, MSA S538-50, 34:243, Maryland State Archives.
3 center of town, and John Brice II would have only enhanced the desirability of the land with the purchase of lot 103—more than double the size of lot 94—in 1757.47
Neither John Brice I or II materialized their dreams of constructing a town house in
Annapolis, but John Brice II’s will made clear that he expected James to execute his legacy. In addition to the two city lots, Brice left his son “all the Bricks Lime and
Stone Plank & Timber already worked up or to be worked up & which I have made
Burnt & raised for the Purpose of Building a dwelling House.”48
Today, James Brice’s imposing Annapolis town house dominates East Street
(fig. 3). At its completion in 1774, it would have been among the tallest buildings in the city of Annapolis, with a commanding view of the Annapolis Harbor from the front and the Severn River from the back. The house is constructed primarily of brick and features a two-and-a-half story central block flanked on either side by two one- and-a-half story wings, each connected by an enclosed brick hyphen. Though clearly calling back to the five-part Palladian country houses of England, the James Brice
House is a vernacular building. Historians have previously attributed its design to famed architect William Buckland, who worked on the Hammond Harwood and
47 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 5.
48 Will of John Brice, MSA S538-50, 34:243, Maryland State Archives.
4 Chase-Lloyd houses in Annapolis, but Buckland’s name is notably absent in the copious records Brice kept during construction (fig. 4, fig. 5).
The house itself provides evidence of local design solutions. The steep pitched roof with large brick chimneys on each gable end are features common of vernacular houses in colonial Maryland and Virginia, and discrepancies in scale and perspective distinguish Brice’s mansion from other Chesapeake houses built with the trained eye of an architect. Orlando Ridout IV documented “three unconventional transgressions against the rules of Georgian proportion” in Brice’s town house: the notably small
Palladian-inspired window, the low position of the belt course, and the large gap between the belt course and second story windowsills.49 These design quirks, according to Ridout, likely resulted from “Brice’s lack of understanding of those rules
[of proportion] as well as his lack of training in architectural design.”50 While dreaming of his own house, a young James Brice watched the construction of another
Annapolis mansion built for his neighbor, William Paca, between 1763 and 1765 (fig.
6). Paca’s similar five-part Georgian home has been understood as the “immediate
49 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 15.
50 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 15.
5 prototype” for Brice’s building.51 Though smaller and less ornamental, Paca’s town house is far more proportionally successful.
While William Paca’s construction site was only steps away from his childhood home, a young James Brice would have found no shortage of building projects to admire in Annapolis throughout the late 1760s and early 1770s. He could have looked to the homes of politicians and civic leaders like John Ridout on Duke of
Gloucester Street (built 1764-65, fig. 7), Mathias Hammond Samuel Chase on
Maryland Avenue (built 1774 and 1769-74, fig. 4 and fig. 5, respectively), and the ongoing renovations at Charles Carroll’s ancestral home on Spa Creek (built 1724, expanded 1770s, fig. 8). While familiar with enslaved labor in his own household and on his family’s expansive plantations, these large-scale building projects may have been James Brice’s first real exposure to the work and management of enslaved craftspeople in the city.52
51 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 15.
52 No surviving evidence indicates that William Buckland was involved with James Brice’s town house. However, Buckland’s involvement with the Hammond Harwood House and Chase Lloyd House would have provided James Brice with yet another example of seeing enslaved craftspeople at work. The inventory of William Buckland’s estate, taken after his death in 1774, lists servant bricklayers, carpenters, joiners, and carvers, as well as “Oxford a Negroe Man, Sue a Negroe Woman, Hannah a Young Negroe Woman, Joe an Negroe Boy, [and] Beck a Negroe Girl,” in Rosamond Randall Beirne and John Henry Scarff, William Buckland: Architect of Maryland and Virginia (Baltimore: The Maryland Historical Society, 1958), 147.
6 If James Brice’s surroundings in Annapolis influenced the design and construction of his town house, so too did his childhood home on lot 85, directly across Prince George Street from neighbor William Paca (fig. 6). Built for John Brice
II in 1737, the house on lot 85 is outwardly quite different than the house his son would build thirty years later, though their interior plans are almost identical. Known to scholars of vernacular architecture as the long-room and parlor plan, both Brice family homes can be grouped with several similarly planned Annapolis houses, and, with slight distinctions, houses further south in Virginia.53 Through detailed comparisons of the old and new Brice houses, Orlando Ridout IV found that the
Brice’s home on lot 84 was “clearly the model upon which James based the floor plan for the new house.”54 One feature in particular stands out. In the older house, a service staircase against the east gable rises from the cellar to the attic. In his new house, the service stair is present in the same location, though only ascending from the first to the second floor. While reproduction of this staircase may indicate James’s desire to replicate elements of his childhood home that he “found to be comfortable and
53 Orlando Ridout IV, “The Brice House in American Architecture,” in Building the James Brice House 1767-1774 (Annapolis: Friends of the Maryland State Archives, January 2013) and Cary Carson and Carl L. Lounsbury, eds. The Chesapeake House: Architectural Investigation by Colonial Williamsburg (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
54 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 18.
7 convenient,” the purpose of the service staircase necessitates a deeper reading of
Brice’s motivations.55
Relying on his own visual and spatial vocabulary and aided by design books like Andrea Palladio’s Four Books of Architecture and Isaac Ware’s Complete Body of
Architecture, Brice assumed the role of gentleman-architect. While his town house was an object of display—meant to communicate Brice’s social, economic, and political standing in Maryland’s capital city—it was also the stage on which the Brice family enacted daily performances of power and privilege.56 The interior plan of the older Brice house may have been comfortable and familiar, but it was also where
James Brice learned from his father how to manage—and live with—an enslaved staff.
Architectural historian Clifton Ellis has concluded that, although present throughout the larger Anne Arundel county, purpose-built slave dwellings were absent from
Annapolis’s urban landscape.57 While 1789 Federal Direct Tax assessor Jonathan
Jacobs noted the presence of outbuildings like kitchens, granaries, smoke houses, and stables, designated slave dwellings seem to have never populated Annapolis’s built
55 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House ,19.
56 Herman, Townhouse, and Cary Carson and Carl L. Lounsbury, eds. The Chesapeake House: Architectural Investigation by Colonial Williamsburg (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
57 Ellis, “Close Quarters: Master and Slave Space in Eighteenth Century Annapolis,” in Ellis and Ginsburg, eds. Slavery in the City, 71-88.
8 environment.58 This was not the case at the Brice’s plantations. While no Brice family plantation records survive, the extent of their property and diversity of their operations indicate a large enslaved workforce who almost certainly inhabited slave dwellings.
Moving between these two landscapes—rural plantation and urban town house— presented very different spatial experiences for both enslaver and enslaved.
Brice’s reconstruction of the service staircase from his father’s home suggests a conscious effort on behalf of an enslaver to separate spaces of gentility and sociability from the realities of keeping house in the eighteenth century. Division of space into a center block, two hyphens, and two wings was certainly familiar to Brice and pleasing to the eighteenth-century eye. It also meant that while the Brices and their guests entered the house through the front door, enslaved house servants entered through a hyphen or wing and gained access to the main house by a hidden network of service staircases. It was up these steep, narrow, and winding steps that enslaved house servants carefully carried baskets of laundry, kettles and urns of hot water, and glass and ceramic vessels containing food and drink. While Annapolis’s urban landscape did not provide Brice with space for building detached slave quarters— spatial arrangements familiar to him from his own plantations—the wings, cellar, and attic of his Annapolis mansion became working and living quarters for those he
58 Ellis, “Close Quarters: Master and Slave Space in Eighteenth Century Annapolis,” in Ellis and Ginsburg, eds. Slavery in the City, 71-88.
9 enslaved. Growing up in his father’s house, James Brice watched daily negotiations of space and power between enslaver and enslaved. While geography necessitated close quarters between Brice, his family, and the men, women, and children he enslaved, small details like the service stair reveal an enslaver’s struggle to manipulate space in order to render invisible the labor that made his household run.59
It is probable that at least some of the people held in bondage by James Brice both built and lived in his Annapolis town house. It is also possible that certain craftspeople enslaved by the Brice family aided in the construction of both the older
Brice house in 1737, and the newer from 1767-1774. James Brice’s account books display artisans in motion. The names of free and indentured craftspeople appear and appear again, popping in and out from one month to the next as carpenters, bricklayers, and masons cycled through projects around the city. That white artisans in
Annapolis moved from project to project throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century indicates similar patterns among enslaved artisans, who, though in small numbers, do appear—being transported, traded, bought, and sold—throughout the pages of James Brice’s account books.
59 Cary Carson, “Plantation Housing: Seventeenth Century,” Edward A. Chappell, “Housing Slavery,” in Carson and Lounsbury, eds. The Chesapeake House, and Dell Upton “Pattern Books and Professionalism: Aspects of the Transformation of Domestic Architecture in America, 1800-1860,” Winterthur Portfolio 19, no. 2/3 (Summer, Autumn 1984): 107-150.
10 Three generations of Brice men worked to erect a town house in Annapolis.
Though James Brice ultimately succeeded in doing so, the project bankrupted him.60
His careful records of expenses, materials, and labor are testament to his investment— both personal and financial—in his unprecedented building project. Brice’s willingness to risk his fortune to build his house—and the desire of his father and grandfather before him—speak to the importance of the town house in early American life. Bernard Herman argues that town houses matter “as a medium for the assertion of social identity, as settings for the display of gentility and its applications, [and] as sites of power and its negotiation.”61 Through its design, construction, usage, and broader spatial relationships, James Brice’s town house can be understood as both an object and an urban setting, a thing built and manipulated by enslaved artisans, but also a space they lived in, worked in, and moved through.
Using James Brice’s Account Books
The breadth of James Brice’s account books provides a uniquely detailed glimpse into the daily life and work of a diverse group of highly skilled artisans.
While gentleman-architects of similar status and education also kept written records
60 When James Brice’s estate was appraised in 1801, he was seven thousand pounds in debt. James Brice Estate Appraisal, Final Account, Anne Arundel County Court, Register of Wills (Testamentary Papers) Box 96, folder 2, 1/4/10/5, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
61 Herman, Townhouse, 2.
11 detailing their own building projects, architectural historian Orlando Ridout IV praised
Brice’s accounts as “one of the most important collections of primary source material for documenting the construction of a house in colonial America.”62 This importance stems from the account books’ detailed lists of materials and their prices, stages of construction, and the ability to match specific construction and design details with the artisans who implemented them—rare and exciting information for architectural historians and material culture scholars alike. But at first glance, Brice’s account books do not seem to include much information about enslaved artisans—men who certainly played important roles on this construction project—at all. The word “slave” is notably absent from Brice’s account books, and the descriptor “negro” appears infrequently, often with little indication of the artisan’s status as free or enslaved.63
“How do slaveholders’ interests affect how they document their world?”64
Historian Marisa Fuentes’s question informs my approach in this chapter. Through the pages of James Brice’s account books, the enslaved are present, but “systematically distorted”: masked by their enslavers, by the financial transactions surrounding their
62 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, VIII.
63 James Brice Account Books, in Orlando Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House 1767-1774 (Annapolis: Friends of the Maryland State Archives, January 2013).
64 Though Fuentes focuses on eighteenth century Barbados, her methodology and focus on urban space have proven beneficial to this chapter. Marisa Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2016), 5.
12 labor, and by the material goods manipulated by and provided for them.65 Enslaved artisans are not named or described in Brice’s accounts with the same detail as white craftspeople. Instead they usually appear under the label of “labourers,” terminology that reflects the commodification of their labor rather than their humanity. While
Brice’s construction project took place in an urban environment, like many other wealthy Annapolis enslavers he held thousands of acres in plantation lands in both
Cecil and Anne Arundel counties. Historian Caitlin Rosenthal argues that account books enabled planters to “tally up the daily activities of every enslaved man or woman who performed work,” on plantations, thus pairing management expertise with tactics of violence to motivate labor and increase profits.66 But what does it mean for an enslaver to rely on an account book once removed from the plantation landscape and from the possibility of making a profit? What can James Brice’s account book reveal how he understood his position as manager and enslaver?
Building in Annapolis on Lotts 94 & 103”
65 Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, 4.
66 Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, August 2018), 29. While Rosenthal’s project begins in the late eighteenth century, much of her investigation refers to nineteenth-century plantation management practices.
13 Four months after his father’s death in September of 1766, James Brice forcibly relocated several enslaved men from his eastern shore plantation to Annapolis where they began the process of “Digging Foundation House 49 by 44, 6 feet Deep.”67
From January to April, the men dug—presumably all day long—with the assistance of shovels, plows, and “horse-drawn, two-handled scoops.”68 Weeks of heavy rain in
March, however, caused “the Rivers and Runs of water [to] swell so much above their usual Bounds,” that they had to bail water from the exposed cellar, significantly slowing their backbreaking progress.69 With the spring came more agreeable weather.
By mid-April Brice had four additional enslaved laborers from his plantation transported to Annapolis, this time to assist stonemason John Scorce in raising the cellar walls.70 Brice paid Scorce £49:14:3 for “raising the Cellar Story of Building.”71
The enslaved men who labored alongside him received no payment.72
67 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 27.
68 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 27.
69 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 27, and Maryland Gazette, March 12, 1767 (Microfilm, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland).
70 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 27.
71 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 27.
72 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 28.
14 That the men who dug the foundation and raised the cellar walls—referred to only as “labourers”—were enslaved is evidenced by how and where James Brice recorded their work. Brice made his list of laborers on one of several loose sheets of paper (presumably torn from a contemporaneous account book that does not survive or kept folded within Brice’s extant account books). Brice entitled the page “Sundries for Buildings for which no Cash was paid and which were furnished by Sarah and
James Brice, Half by Jn. Brice, decd. [sic].”73 Thus the extensive list of supplies and labor “for which no Cash was paid,” were not cash transactions like those recorded on other pages of Brice’s account books, but were instead deducted from James Brice’s personal estate, as well as the estates of his mother, Sarah Frisby Brice, and his late father.74 Because the “labourers” who dug the foundation and raised the cellar walls are listed on this page, it becomes clear that the prices listed, £20 and £28:16:0 respectively, do not reflect payment.75 Instead, the prices reflect the cost of transport from the plantation to the city.76
73 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 219.
74 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 219.
75 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 219.
76 Investment from both James Brice and his parents totaled about thirty percent of the total cost of the building, in James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 219.
15 Brice’s other contributions include brick, lime, sand, and transportation of said materials from his plantations in Cecil and Anne Arundel counties to Annapolis.77
While most entries on this page do not specify which Brice family property or plantation the materials and labor came from, some lines provide compelling detail.
For example, the first entry lists the cost of “190,600 Bricks made on Severn” and their “flatting from Turners Neck.”78 That the bricks were made along the Severn river indicates that these materials traveled from a plantation in Anne Arundel County rather than the Northernmost Brice properties in Cecil County. Here, genealogical records provide the most compelling suggestions. After the death of James Brice’s grandfather, John Brice I, in 1713, his widow Sarah (Howard) Worthington possessed several plots of land, including lot 94 in Annapolis and a tract called Turner’s
Purchase on the north side of the Severn River.79 Sarah then left these properties to her eldest son, John, James Brice’s father.80 While Turner’s Purchase is not listed among the lands passed to James Brice from his father in 1766, his account book makes clear that he relies not only on the land he inherited, but also on his parents’ property. If
Turner’s Neck was a minor channel of the Severn River with access to the Brice
77 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 219.
78 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House 219.
79 Will of John Brice, MSA S538-50, 34:243, Maryland State Archives.
80 Will of John Brice, MSA S538-50, 34:243, Maryland State Archives.
16 family’s Turner’s Purchase, perhaps this property was valuable because of abundant clay perfect for brickmaking.
Though James Brice employed a free brickmaker named Jacob Leaf in
Annapolis, those forming and firing bricks at Turner’s Purchase were almost certainly enslaved. There is no way to know how long it took them to craft the 190,600 bricks made on the plantation, but a brickmaker’s work could be completed year-round.
Though brickmakers preferred warmer weather in the spring, summer, and fall for molding and firing, they may have dug clay throughout the winter provided there wasn’t significant ice or snow. While brickmaking has often been considered unskilled labor, a newspaper advertisement placed in the Maryland Gazette calling for “A
Brick-Maker, who understands his Business,” shows that it required a level of specialist knowledge.81 Brickmakers first worked and kneaded the clay, adding water as necessary to reach the proper consistency. Once mixed properly, the wet clay was divided into wooden molds before being turned out and stacked to dry. Both molding and stacking were tedious work, but the firing process was much more complex and dangerous. Orlando Ridout IV explains that bricks would have been fired for five days, over which temperatures inside of the kiln needed to be carefully controlled and
81 John Brice, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, June 3, 1761, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
17 gradually increased until reaching near two-thousand degrees Fahrenheit.82 The enslaved brickmakers working at Turner’s Purchase also probably felled the locally available Hickory trees which, when burned to fire bricks, produced a desirable finish.
Enslaved brickmakers were also likely to have made the 14,600 bricks James Brice purchased from the brickyard of Governor Horatio Sharpe in June of 1768. Sharpe established his brickyard to supply his own ambitious building project, a country estate on the eastern shore which he named Whitehall.83
“…something of a gardiner, carpenter, and bricklayer”
Twenty-three years after construction on his Annapolis town house finished,
James Brice posted the following runaway advertisement in the Maryland Gazette for
Jem, an enslaved bricklayer:
WENT away on the 9th inst. From the subscriber, living in the city of Annapolis, a negro man named JEM, a lively, brisk, active fellow when he pleases, 28 years of age, about 5 feet 8 inches high, slender made, rather a thin face, has a great hesitation in his speech, and when he laughs shews his gums very much, takes snuff, one of his legs is sore; he is very artful and can turn his hand to any thing; he has been used to waiting, to taking care of horses, and
82 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 33, and Carl R. Lounsbury, “Brickwork,” in Carson and Lounsbury, eds. The Chesapeake House. Michael Chiarappa additionally highlights the skill of early American brickmakers in “‘The First and Best Sort’: Quakerism, Brick Artisanry, and the Vernacular Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century West New Jersey Pattern Brickwork Architecture,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1992).
83 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 33. Catherine Bishir has written on enslaved construction crews working in New Bern, North Carolina, in Crafting Lives.
18 driving a carriage, is something of a gardiner, carpenter, and bricklayer—is or pretends to be of the society of Methodists—he constantly attended the meetings, and at times exhorted himself; he took with him a watch of his own, a fine hat, new drab coloured surtout coat, lined about the body with green, light cloth waistcoat, buckskin breeches; a black coat lapelled is missing from the house; it is probably he may change his dress; he had some time in the summer from me a pass for a limited time (three or four days) to go to Baltimore, it is not improbably but he may get the date altered and make use of it. Whoever takes him up and delivers him to me, or secures him in any gaol so that I get him again, shall receive TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD.84
Jem would have only been five years old by the completion of Brice’s town house in
1774, but the detail with which he is described by his enslaver twenty-three years later discloses more than initially meets the eye.85 Runaway advertisements reveal more about enslaved people than “who owned them, what they wore, and to whom they might run,” and, in the case of Jem, provides valuable insight into issues of labor, skill, and mobility among enslaved artisans that inform our understanding of the James
Brice house construction project twenty years earlier.86 From the advertisement alone, we know that Jem was skilled across trades: he worked as a waiter, cared for horses, drove carriages, and was also a gardener, carpenter, and bricklayer.87
84 James Brice, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, December 16, 1797, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
85 Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, 14.
86 Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, 14.
87 James Brice, Maryland Gazette, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
19 The range of work demanded of Jem both in Annapolis and on any of the Brice family plantations each required their own set of specialized skills and knowledge and would have involved him in agricultural and architectural projects, but would have similarly situated him in close proximity to not only his enslavers, but the many social and political elites that would have visited and dined with the Brices. In describing his lost property as “very artful and can turn his hand to any thing,” James Brice likely meant to portray Jem as cunning and untrustworthy, designations in keeping with his racialized view of African American characteristics.88 Instead we can see a talented and capable artisan whose material and economic contributions his enslaver sorely missed. Indeed, Jem’s capture and return came at a significant price. James Brice offered twenty dollars to any person who could deliver his lost property or secure Jem
“in any gaol so I get him again.”89 Brice’s wealth notwithstanding, runaway advertisements for enslaved artisans in and around Annapolis at the turn of the nineteenth century indicate Brice’s investment. Two months before Brice advertised for Jem’s return, Richard Sprigg offered twenty dollars total for the return of two enslaved artisans, Scogin and Marsham, a carpenter and sawyer, respectively.90 In
88 Sharon Block, Colonial Complexions Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2018) and Waldstreicher, Runaway America.
89 James Brice, Maryland Gazette, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
90 Richard Sprigg, advertisement in the Federal Gazette and Daily Advertiser, October 2, 1797, America’s Historical Newspapers Digitized Newspapers Database.
20 1800, William Stewart pledged thirty dollars for the return of an enslaved shipwright named Jem, his wife Nancy, and the boat they used to escape.91 While far from an exhaustive or determinant list, these examples suggest that James Brice’s offer was rooted in his estimation of Jem’s skill as an artisan.
As is often the case with enslaved people, Jem appears in the archival record briefly, and through the perspective of his enslaver. No extant sources reveal whether
Jem successfully claimed his freedom, and if so, where he ended up. Likewise, we are also left to wonder about the details of Jem’s life before he ran away on December 9,
1797. It is impossible to know the circumstances of Jem’s enslavement to the Brice family. He could have been purchased as a child or teenager, could have become
Brice’s property through his wife’s dowry, or may have been descended from generations of Brice family slaves. If Jem was born on one of the Brice family plantations, it is possible that he learned one or more trades from a relative. Mary
Thompson has demonstrated how “skilled and domestic occupations at Mount
Vernon… were often hereditary within families” because enslaved children “already knew many aspects of a given position because they had been taught by their parents.”92 Whether or not Jem learned bricklaying, carpentry, or any of his other
91 William Stewart, advertisement in the Federal Gazette and Daily Advertiser, October 24, 1800, America’s Historical Newspapers Digitized Newspapers Database.
92 Thompson, ‘The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,’ 113-114. For more on hereditary craft practice, see Christine Daniels, “From Father to Son: Economic Roots of Craft Dynasties in Eighteenth-Century Maryland,” in Howard B. Rock, Paul A.
21 trades from a relative, an enslaved artisan to whom he was not related, or a white artisan, he certainly would have lived and worked among other enslaved craftspeople who contributed to the construction and maintenance of James Brice’s town house.
What can the runaway advertisement James Brice placed reveal about how the enslaved artisans who built his house may have lived in and moved through the city of
Annapolis? While recognizing that this narrow glimpse into Jem’s life cannot stand in for the experiences of other artisans enslaved by James Brice, we can make some assumptions. Details included in the advertisement indicate that Jem experienced a relative freedom of movement throughout the city and the region. Brice noted that Jem
“constantly attended the meetings,” of the Methodists.93 A compelling detail on its own, mention of Jem’s religious practice is even more significant when placed in a broader material context. In the summer of 1998, Archaeology in Annapolis began excavations in and around the James Brice House through the support of the Maryland
Historical Trust.94 Their team of archaeologists unearthed concentrated, careful burials of beads, glass bottles, pierced coins, and feathers under a doorway in the cellar—
Gilje, and Robert Asher, eds. American Artisans: Crafting Social Identity, 1750-1850 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), Stanton, Slavery at Monticello, and Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello.
93 James Brice, Maryland Gazette, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
94 Archaeological Investigations at the James Brice House (18Ap38): A National Historic Landmark Site. Annapolis, Maryland. Report prepared for the Historic Annapolis Foundation.
22 objects that point to the survival of West African-influenced spiritual practices among some of the individuals enslaved by James Brice.95 The buried caches (or spirit bundles) excavated from the Brice House cellar, Jem’s apparent Methodism, and the
Anglicanism of the Brice family hint at the religious and spiritual diversity present in one house, let alone the entire city.
By highlighting places Jem might frequent—like the Methodist meeting house or the city of Baltimore—Brice sought to expose Jem in spaces where he historically went undetected. In addition to the built environment, James Brice also mobilized material goods in search for his lost property. Brice wrote that Jem absconded with “a watch of his own, a fine hat, new drab coloured surtout coat, lined about the body with green, light cloth waistcoat, buckskin breeches,” and that “a black coat lapelled is missing from the house.”96 Brice’s language indicates that Jem owned more—and better—than the average slave. A watch “of his own,” a “fine” hat, and a “new” coat could indicate Jem’s own purchasing power as what Ann Smart Martin has called a
“player in the world of goods.”97 The quality of Jem’s clothing might also reveal his
95 Archaeological Investigations at the James Brice House (18Ap38), Report prepared for the Historic Annapolis Foundation. 96 James Brice, Maryland Gazette, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
97 James Brice, Maryland Gazette, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers, and Ann Smart Martin, “Suckey’s Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers,” in Buying Into the World of Goods: Consumers in Backcountry Virginia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 173.
23 “perceived importance and visibility to the white community.”98 No surviving documents indicate whether James Brice outfitted any enslaved servants in livery, but that Jem worked as both a waiter and carriage driver imply a heightened level of visibility that may have been materially translated into higher-quality clothing.99
No surviving sources indicate the kinds and amounts of clothing James Brice purchased for the men, women, and children he enslaved. However, whites, even in urban areas, associated enslaved people with the coarse linen given to them by planters.100 Of course, Linda Baumgarten reminds us that “style and quality of clothing given to slaves depended upon their occupation, which… could change quickly.”101 Jem certainly wouldn’t have worn his fine hat and new coat while bricklaying or gardening, but he may have been able to afford such goods by renting his expertise to enslavers throughout the city, and, by wearing these items to travel in
98 Linda Baumgarten, “‘Clothes for the People’: Slave Clothing in Early Virginia,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 14, no. 2 (November 1988).
99 Baumgarten, “‘Clothes for the People’: Slave Clothing in Early Virginia.”
100 Robert S. DuPlessis, The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 131, 140, 206-213, and Jennifer Van Horn “An Indian Chintz Gown: Slavery and Fashion,” The Junto (September 12, 2018) https://earlyamericanists.com/2018/09/12/an-indian-chintz-gown-slavery-and-fashion/.
101 Linda Baumgarten, “‘Clothes for the People’: Slave Clothing in Early Virginia.”
24 and around Annapolis, he used material possessions to signify his status as an artisan and ability to partake in the purchasing of consumer goods.
“Paid… for the hire of his Negro Sawyer”
James Brice’s account books make clear that Annapolitans of the middling and upper middling classes engaged in widespread trading of enslaved and indentured artisans.102 For example, Brice recorded a payment of £8:19:3 to “William Reid for the hire of his Negro Sawyer” in October of 1767.103 Here, Reid was paid directly for the expertise of his enslaved sawyer. But as historians Mary Thompson, Louis Nelson, and Marisa Fuentes have demonstrated, the urban enslaved were often able to seek out their own employment—and thus make their own money—when the demands of their enslavers permitted.104
As architect and owner, James Brice was responsible for purchasing the labor and materials necessary to construct his townhouse. As master and enslaver, Brice was responsible for providing the laborers and artisans bound to him—whether temporarily
102 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House.
103 Throughout the account books, James Brice is consistent in referring to enslaved laborers as either “negroes” or “laborers” while he refers to indentured servants as “servants” and convict servants as “convicts.” For example, Brice’s record of a “Servt. Stucco Worker” denotes an indentured servant, not an enslaved laborer. James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 64, 99.
104 See Thompson, ‘The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,’ McInnis and Nelson, eds. Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s University, Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, and Bishir, Crafting Lives.
25 or for life—with basic necessities like food and clothing. Indeed, Brice’s account books are a remarkable source because purchases of wooden planks, shingles, rope, and stone appear alongside purchases of “Gloves for John,” “Leather Apron… &
Shoes for Daniel,” “Breeches for Servts,” and “Boarding John Matthews
Carpenter.”105 These material goods and accommodations Brice purchased for his laborers provide insight into their workload that is not otherwise obvious through the pages of his account books. In July 1767, James Brice recorded a purchase of “shoes for [William Reid’s] negro” sawyer.106 By September of the same year, Brice recorded yet another purchase of shoes for the enslaved sawyer. While the sawyer certainly would have worn footwear of a lower quality, that his shoes needed to be replaced after less than two months of work implies long days of strenuous, messy, and likely dangerous labor. Interestingly, Brice spent £5.9.3 on shoes in September as opposed to only £3.1.0 in July, perhaps indicating a conscious decision on Brice’s part to purchase footwear of a higher quality that might last longer—a smart investment for laborers working long hours on a dangerous construction site.107
105 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 64, 65, 219.
106 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 74
107 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 64, 74.
26 James Brice’s account books reflect his need for dependable laborers at every stage of construction—whether free, indentured, or enslaved. In addition to the many free, white artisans Brice hired, he also rented and purchased the contracts of several indentured and convict servants, including plasterer Thomas Harvey and bricklayer
Henry Jackson. Just as Brice rented the labor of William Reid’s enslaved sawyer, his account books also show payments to George Lewis for the labor of “Mulatto Watt, alias Watt Wright” in 1767.108 Through Brice’s account book, we can glean that sometime in 1767, Lewis sold Watt to staymaker Charles Wallace, who collected payment for Watt’s labor in all subsequent account entries. The management of labor and material throughout James Brice’s account books represent decisions that had deeply personal and significant consequences for the artisans and laborers—enslaved and free—who worked to construct his architectural masterpiece. Two lines in James
Brice’s account book are the only archival trace of what must have been a life-altering change for Watt Wright. Though he remained in Annapolis and continued work on the same construction project, we cannot know how the material or psychological conditions of his enslavement may have changed under Charles Wallace, or if the move meant separation from friends or relatives still enslaved by Lewis.
“Paid John Shaw, for 214 Days Work”
108 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV Building the James Brice House, 83.
27 It is within the pages of James Brice’s account book that John Shaw first enters
Annapolis’s archival record. Born April 25, 1745 in Glasgow, Scotland, John Shaw’s early life and training remain mysterious.109 Port of entry records in Annapolis do not record his arrival in the city, nor did he advertise his arrival in the Maryland Gazette as a cabinetmaker or carpenter in search of work. Shaw’s appearance in the account book of James Brice in 1768, at twenty-three years old, seems to suggest that he immigrated to Annapolis after completing a cabinetmaking apprenticeship while still living in Glasgow. While this cannot be definitively confirmed, Shaw’s carpentry work on the Brice house project makes sense if he lacked the social network, capital, and materials to open his own cabinetmaking shop upon arriving in Annapolis.
Throughout his account books, Brice records several payments to Shaw for labor and materials, but it is clear that Shaw was not among the most valuable artisans employed by Brice; he performed basic carpentry rather than making any significant design or structural choices.110
There would have been no better place for a young immigrant cabinetmaker to expand his personal and professional network than on the construction site of James
Brice’s town house. Of the prolific artisans with whom Shaw worked daily were carpenters Jubb Fowler and James Peale, joiner Robert Key, and painter-glazier
109 Lu Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 14.
110 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House.
28 William Tuck, Sr. Unlike the newcomer Shaw, Fowler, Peale, Key, and Tuck were established artisans in the city of Annapolis by the time they contributed their own talents and materials to Brice’s town house. The relationships Shaw would have built with them—first as mentors, then coworkers, then perhaps friends—certainly grew
Shaw’s network, but also likely propelled his own reputation throughout the city. It would have been similarly prudent for the upstart cabinetmaker to forge a positive relationship with his employer, James Brice. As Orlando Ridout IV argues, several artisans who worked on the Brice House project—notably Robert Key and John
Shaw—were seemingly able to leverage their relationships with Brice into increasingly lucrative jobs and commissions.111
Surviving documentation links John Shaw with Jubb Fowler, James Peale,
Robert Key, and William Tuck, Sr. in the years following the completion of James
Brice’s town house, indicating the importance of professional network-building for early American urban artisans. Once established in his own right, Shaw hired Fowler to assist with renovations to the Maryland State House in the 1790s.112 Shaw’s work with James Peale likely spurred his first introduction to Peale’s older brother, Charles
Willson, who returned to Annapolis often from his home in Philadelphia. Charles
111 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 32.
112 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 31-32, and Morris L. Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland at Annapolis (Annapolis: Published by the Hall of Records Commission, 1954).
29 Willson Peale not only advertised from Shaw’s Annapolis workshop in the 1780s, but hired Shaw and his two-time partner, Archibald Chisholm, to frame and hang his monumental portrait of William Pitt in 1768.113 After his work on Brice’s house,
Robert Key was hired to build and renovate several government buildings, including the Governor’s Mansion, which Shaw also oversaw as caretaker of state buildings around the turn of the nineteenth century.114 John Shaw’s relationship with painter- glazier William Tuck, Sr. must have been especially strong. His oldest son, William
Jr., was employed as a journeyman in Shaw’s workshop throughout the 1790s, and the younger Washington Tuck was bound to Shaw as an apprentice in 1798.115 Shaw also continued to work in various capacities for James Brice. In 1782, Brice hired Shaw to repair, stuff, and cover an easy chair and build a mahogany cradle.116 In 1784, Brice paid Shaw for a “large pine bookcase,” “mahogany oval breakfast table without a stretcher,” an “oval tea board with silver’d handles,” and a “hair mattress for a
113 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 19.
114 Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 31-32, and Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland at Annapolis.
115 Anne Arundel County Register of Wills, Orphans Court Proceedings, 1798, fol. 31, MSA C 125-8, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
116 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 119.
30 Crib.”117 Brice sought out Shaw again in 1786, purchasing a “stain’d crib bedstead for a child.”118
From 1767 until 1774, the construction site on lots 94 and 103 served as a social nexus for free, apprenticed, indentured, and enslaved artisans and laborers in and around Annapolis. From Brice, Fowler, Peale, Key, and Tuck, John Shaw learned the ins and outs of his new city, met future customers, and saw firsthand what genteel
Annapolitans found fashionable. Here, John Shaw cultivated relationships that influenced his future success and, in some cases, lasted a lifetime. Here, John Shaw surely noticed the social and economic successes of artisan-enslavers like Jubb Fowler and William Tuck, Sr., and was likely impressed by James Brice’s ability to command a large, enslaved labor force to erect his town house. From these men, the young
Scottish cabinetmaker learned the intricacies of managing time, materials, and labor.
Here, John Shaw first learned how to be an enslaver.
117 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 119.
118 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 119.
31 Chapter 2
SLAVERY AND SHOP PRACTICE, 1770-1790
“few, if any better workmen in America”
TO BE SOLD, a likely young Negro fellow, by trade a Silversmith, Jeweller and Lapidary; there is very few, if any better workmen in America. Any person inclining to purchase the said Negro, may know further, by applying to the subscriber, living in Annapolis. WM. FARIS119
Sometime around November 1778, a young man enslaved by Annapolis watch and clockmaker William Faris learned that he would be sold to the highest bidder.120
In an advertisement placed in the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Daily Advertiser on November 9, Faris announced the sale of this enslaved worker, suggesting that any interested buyers “may know further, by applying to the subscriber, living in
Annapolis.”121 Faris did not name the enslaved man, describe his physical features, or note anything about his mannerisms or personality in the advertisement, but instead focused on his abilities (and therefore, his financial worth) as an artisan. Faris noted that the young man is “by trade a Silversmith, Jeweller, and Lapidary,” and that “there
119 William Faris, advertisement in the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Daily Advertiser, November 7, 1778, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
120 Letzer and Russo, “Clockmaker and Silversmith,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 57.
121 William Faris, Maryland Journal and Baltimore Daily Advertiser, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers, and Letzer and Russo, “Clockmaker and Silversmith,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 57.
32 is very few, if any better workmen in America.”122 Faris may well have believed that the man he enslaved was an exceptionally skilled and diligent worker. However,
Faris’s high praise was also intended to appeal to potential buyers. Ever the entrepreneur, Faris would have known the high price a so-called “skilled slave” could attract.
Scholars of slavery and material culture alike commonly make assumptions about what constituted “skilled” and “unskilled” labor based on outdated and racially- exclusionary understandings. While artisanal trades, like cabinetmaking, silversmithing, and painting, for example, are often described as “skilled” work, manual, agricultural, and domestic labor are more commonly labeled as
“unskilled.”123 The ideal of the white male artisan has dominated scholarship on early
122 William Faris, Maryland Journal and Baltimore Daily Advertiser, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers and Letzer and Russo, “Clockmaker and Silversmith,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 57. For more on advertisements, slavery, and constructions of race, see Block, Colonial Complexions and Waldstreicher, Runaway America.
123 Historians of the early modern period have often associated skilled labor with the European guild system. This is complicated in colonial America. Paul Gilje notes that historians have debated the social position of early American artisans, some arguing for artisans as “would-be entrepreneurs,” and others as “more akin to common laborers.” Though no formal guild system followed artisans to the colonies, some forms of labor were nevertheless privileged over others. The introduction of the 1772 Furniture Price Book in Philadelphia, for example, provided urban cabinetmakers with a level of protection and security that reinforced their status as a privileged trade. For more on artisans and social status, see Howard B. Rock, Paul A. Gilje, and Robert Asher, eds. American Artisans: Crafting Social Identity, 1750-1850 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), and Alexandra Kirtley, The 1772 Philadelphia
33 American craft, leading historians to allow racial and gendered biases to cloud their understanding of craft production. Catherine Bishir has begun to tackle this “popular stereotype of African American southerners [that] focuses on their labor in fields and forests, as servants and laborers,” noting the constant presence of free and enslaved black artisans throughout early America.124
The narrow association of craft production with skilled labor likewise denies the knowledge and abilities of enslaved men and women who labored on plantations or within households. Walter Johnson has demonstrated the ecological and agricultural knowledge, as well as the physical strength and agility, of enslaved men and women who worked the cotton fields of the Deep South, whereas Mary Thompson has revealed the “specialized knowledge expected” of chamber and house maids enslaved at Mount Vernon.125 The historical linkage of African American work with lack of skill erases the labor of the many men and women who practiced craft trades, including Faris’s unnamed enslaved artisan. It also ignores completely the skill required of the thousands more forced into domestic and agricultural labor. There were many types of work performed by enslaved men and women, especially in urban
Furniture Price Book: A Facsimile (Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2006).
124 Bishir, Crafting Lives, 7. Similarly, Marla Miller highlights the constant presence of women artisans in early America in Betsy Ross and the Making of America.
125 Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 152-166, and Thompson, “‘The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret’, 111.
34 centers like Annapolis. Enslaved artisans and laborers were skilled in their own right, a point that leads Walter Johnson to remind scholars “to understand slavery as the violent appropriation not only of abstract labor, but also of material knowledge.”126
Though it is crucial for scholars to acknowledge the implicit bias in assigning levels of skill to the many different types of work undertaken by enslaved men and women, it remains important to understand how the lives and experiences of those bound to craft production differed from those bound to agricultural or household labor.
Enslaved artisans like Faris’s unnamed silversmith had certain advantages that sometimes enabled them to control their own time and labor, make and save money that could be used to purchase extra food and drink, consumer goods, or the freedom of themselves or their loved ones, and interact with men and women of all social, religious, economic, and cultural backgrounds.127 Alternatively, enslaved artisans in urban areas were sometimes the only Black members of their households. While the average family in Annapolis owned four slaves, the majority of households held one person in bondage.128 While enslaved men and women in every circumstance faced separation from kin, enslaved artisans in urban locales were more likely to be isolated in an all-white or nearly all-white household. Additionally, enslaved artisans were
126 Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 16
127 Bishir, Crafting Lives.
128 Letzer and Russo, “William Faris’s Annapolis,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 11.
35 often well-known in the community, meaning that any increased mobility likely came with increased surveillance. As Louis Nelson has demonstrated, “reputations cut both ways.”129 Because many of the enslaved laborers working at the University of
Virginia were well known throughout central Virginia, they often found it harder to escape to freedom.130 The silversmith enslaved by William Faris would have been similarly visible in Annapolis’s craft community, but also in the community as a whole. Local artisans familiar with his work may have sought to purchase the young man upon seeing Faris’s advertisement, and Annapolitans with connections to artisans elsewhere may have passed on knowledge of the sale to silversmiths or jewelers working in Baltimore, Philadelphia, or other urban locales.
Catherine Bishir argues that “artisan crafts generally represented the most lucrative occupations open to men of color.”131 While this was certainly true at times, the lives of enslaved artisans were marred with the same physical, emotional, and psychological violence as their counterparts who performed domestic and agricultural labor. That violence is implicit in the advertisement placed by William Faris in 1778, which makes clear the lack of control the enslaved silversmith could exert over his
129 Louis P. Nelson and James Zehmer, “Slavery and Construction,” in McInnis and Nelson, eds. Educated in Tyranny, 37.
130 Nelson and Zehmer, “Slavery and Construction,” in McInnis and Nelson, eds. Educated in Tyranny, 37.
131 Bishir, Crafting Lives, 44.
36 own life, the possibility that he could be sold into circumstances far worse than those he experienced with Faris, and the threat of violence at the hands of his enslaver. We can not know the anxiety, fear, or even relief that the man Faris may have felt on learning he would be sold. The enslaved silversmith could have been eager to leave
Faris’s household; after all, Faris was known in Annapolis for his insolence and was brought to court for charges of assault and battery on more than one occasion.132
However, with no way of knowing where—and with whom—he might end up, we can only speculate as to the feelings of dread and sadness that may have consumed the young man set to be sold. Leaving Faris’s household likely meant separation from family, friends, and perhaps the only city in which the enslaved silversmith had ever lived.
In many ways, the advertisement Faris placed in 1778 leaves us with more questions than answers. However, it seems safe to assume that the man Faris enslaved and trained as a silversmith, jeweler, and lapidarist was heavily involved in the day-to- day production in Faris’s shop. Though he is remembered today as Maryland’s most accomplished silversmith, scholars have long questioned Faris’s knowledge of the craft. In a 1975 catalogue of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Maryland silver at the
132 In March of 1762, William Faris was prosecuted for assaulting Dr. John Shaw (not the cabinetmaker). Faris also appeared before a grand jury on charges of assault in both 1770 and 1772. In August of 1773, Faris paid fifty pounds “to guarantee his good behavior” until a November court date. For more on Faris’s biography, see Letzer and Russo, “Profile of William Faris,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris.
37 Baltimore Museum of Art, Jennifer Faulds Goldsborough and Ann Boyce Harper hypothesized that Faris, who was apprenticed in the trades of clock and watch making not silversmithing, “may have actually learned the silversmith’s craft from hired workmen.”133 Likewise, Jean Russo and Mark Letzer claim that “to state that a piece of silver with Faris’s touch mark was made by him is not necessarily accurate, inasmuch as William Faris may never have actually hammered silver.”134 While
Goldsborough and Harper suggest that the majority of silver bearing Faris’s mark was undertaken by “employees or by his sons working in his shop.” Faris’s 1778 advertisement allows us to repopulate his shop on Church Street with at least one enslaved artisan—an enslaved artisan who may have even trained Faris, his sons, or his apprentices in the years before his sale.135
“William Faris, WATCH-MAKER, from PHILADELPHIA”
William Faris, born in London August 16, 1728, followed a typical path for early Maryland artisans when he came to Annapolis by way of Philadelphia.136
133 Jennifer Faulds Goldsborough and Ann Boyce Harper, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Maryland Silver in the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1975), 36.
134 Letzer and Russo, “Clockmaker and Silversmith,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 45.
135 Goldsborough and Harper, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Maryland Silver, 36. 136 Letzer and Russo, “Clockmaker and Silversmith,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 13.
38 Following the death of William’s father, Charles, a clockmaker and Quaker who died in prison after refusing to take oaths, serve in the military, or to pay tithes to the
Anglican Church, the widowed Abigail Faris traveled across the Atlantic with her infant son. She settled in Philadelphia early in 1739.137 Living on the corner of Market and Water streets put Faris “in the same neighborhood as Philadelphia’s established clockmakers, watchmakers, silversmiths, and other craftsmen,” including clock-maker
Henry Flower and several members of the famed clock and watch-making Stretch and
Richardson families.138 Though there are no formal apprenticeship records indicating that Faris trained under members of the Stretch or Richardson families, or any other
Philadelphia clockmakers for that matter, by the time he advertised his arrival in
Annapolis in March 1757, Faris called himself a “WATCH-MAKER, from
PHILADELPHIA.”139
By 1760, William Faris’s advertisements in the Maryland Gazette mention his entrance into the silversmithing trade. In an advertisement placed on December 4 of that year, Faris notes “having procured an excellent Workman” for carrying on the
137 Letzer and Russo, “Profile of William Faris,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 13.
138 Letzer and Russo, “Profile of William Faris,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 14.
139 Letzer and Russo, “Profile of William Faris,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 15, and William Faris, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, March 17, 1757, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
39 “SILVERSMITH BUSINESS, Large, Small, or Chas’d Work… Also JEWELLING of any Kind…”140 While it is of course possible that the “excellent Workman” Faris mentions is the enslaved man he decided to sell in 1778, it is perhaps more likely that he refers to a journeyman who had recently completed an apprenticeship in silversmithing. By August of 1763, Faris advertised yet again, this time to announce
“a very compleat SILVERSMITH, who has served a regular Apprenticeship to that
Business” from Philadelphia.141 Scholars have linked Maryland silversmiths William
McParlin, Peter Kirkwood, and Thomas Sparrow with Faris’s workshop; each worked at the sign of the Crown and Dial as journeymen or apprentices throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century.142 Prior to 1778, then, the young man enslaved by
William Faris likely worked alongside Faris, his sons, and the apprentices and journeymen who populated the workshop on Church Street to raise, cast, and chase silver, gold, and other metals, to make repairs, fashion and mend jewelry, and carve and set stones. While scholars and museum professionals have begun to interpret
140 William Faris, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, December 4, 1760, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers, and Letzer and Russo, “Clockmaker and Silversmith,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 45.
141 William Faris, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, August 25, 1763, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers, and Letzer and Russo, “Clockmaker and Silversmith,” in Letzer and Russo, The Diary of William Faris, 45.
142 Goldsborough and Harper, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Maryland Silver, 36.
40 silver bearing William Faris’s mark as the product of several hands, none have yet questioned these objects as products of enslaved labor.143
Recent exhibitions at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and
Winterthur Museum provide useful frameworks for interpreting the pre-1778 silver bearing Faris’s touch mark. Both MESDA and Winterthur considered objects made in the Charleston, South Carolina, workshop of silversmith Alexander Petrie. At Petrie’s death in 1768, an enslaved man named Abraham, labeled as a silversmith, was valued at £400 and sold for a staggering £810—the highest valued “object” in Petrie’s estate.144 The exceptionally high price that Jonathan Sarrazin, another Charleston silversmith, paid for Abraham speaks not just to Abraham’s skill as a silversmith, but also the demand for enslaved labor in urban craft shops. Curators at MESDA and students at Winterthur have re-interpreted silver objects from Alexander Petrie’s workshop. A silver spoon in Winterthur’s collection stamped with Petrie’s mark can thus be understood as “a reminder that from the mine to the shop to the home,
143 Goldsborough and Harper in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Maryland Silver in the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Letzer and Russo in The Diary of William Faris: The Daily Life of an Annapolis Silversmith all note that apprentices, journeymen, and William Faris’s sons likely played vital roles in the production of silver objects, clocks and watches, and jewelry at his Annapolis workshop. However, none of these authors question the role of enslaved labor in Faris’s craft production.
144 Inventory Book of Alexander Petrie, 1768, accessed through Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts Craftsman Database, and Elizabeth Petrie, advertisement in the South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, March 22, 1768, accessed through Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts Craftsman Database.
41 enslaved hands made possible the domestic luxuries of the eighteenth century, like silver, that are celebrated in museums today” (fig. 9) 145
Like Abraham, the young silversmith enslaved by William Faris would have been well-versed in stylistic trends from England as well as the more subdued “neat and plain” preference of consumers in the Chesapeake.146 It is hard to know who trained the young man Faris enslaved, though recent scholarship on artisanal training at Virginia plantations has illuminated both the hereditary nature of labor practices in enslaved communities and the frequency with which journeymen and other hired craftspeople were expected to train enslaved artisans working in their respective trades.147 It is unlikely that Faris himself had the skills necessary to teach
145 Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and Department of Art History at the University of Delaware, “Alexander Petrie Silver Spoon” in Truths of the Trade: Slavery and the Winterthur Collection, 2019, online exhibition http://truthsofthetrade.winterthur.org/silver-spoon/, and Brandy Culp, “Mr. Petrie’s Shop on the Bay,” Antiques and Fine Art Magazine, 2007, 250-255.
146 Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and Department of Art History at the University of Delaware, “Alexander Petrie Silver Spoon” in Truths of the Trade, http://truthsofthetrade.winterthur.org/silver-spoon/.
147 Mary Thompson notes that “Training of slaves was often specifically mentioned in the contracts of skilled hired workers,” in ‘The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,’ 115. For more on hereditary craft practice, see Christine Daniels, “From Father to Son: Economic Roots of Craft Dynasties in Eighteenth-Century Maryland,” in Howard B. Rock, Paul A. Gilje, and Robert Asher, eds. American Artisans: Crafting Social Identity, 1750-1850 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), Stanton, Slavery at Monticello, and Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello.
42 silversmithing to the man he enslaved, but the enslaved silversmith may have passed on his own knowledge to the various other workers who populated Faris’s shop.
It is more likely that he learned from a relative bound to the same trade, or from a journeyman silversmith contractually obligated to train him. Alternatively,
Faris may have sold the young man’s time and labor to a silversmith in town who taught him the trade. However he came to be a trained and talented silversmith, the man enslaved by William Faris must have lived a cosmopolitan life. Like Abraham in
Charleston, the man bound to Faris would have worked alongside a religiously and culturally diverse group of free and bound laborers, manipulated materials and design sources from Europe and beyond, and likely had a degree of mobility within the city that allowed him to experience Annapolis’s bustling maritime landscape, one full of people and goods from across—and beyond—the Atlantic World.148
“CLOCKS… as good as can be made in London”
Several pieces of pre-1778 silver with the mark of William Faris survive today, each of which provides a material entrance into our consideration of slavery and craft in early Annapolis. One object, an eight-day tall case clock in the collection of
Historic Annapolis and displayed at the William Paca House, is especially compelling
(fig. 10). The clock in the collection of Historic Annapolis is the only known collaboration between the workshops of William Faris, John Shaw, and another
148 Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (New York and London: Liveright, 2016).
43 Annapolis cabinetmaker (and two-time partner of John Shaw) Archibald Chisholm.
Though Shaw and Chisholm likely produced several clock cases for Faris, this is the only surviving object that is both marked by Faris and labeled by Shaw and Chisholm.
The case of the clock carries the earliest version of John Shaw and Archibald
Chisholm’s label, effectively dating the piece to the earliest years of their first partnership, between 1772-1776.149
While scholars are rightfully hesitant to attribute marked pieces of silver to the labor of William Faris, his training and advertising as a clock and watchmaker indicate that Faris himself likely crafted most, if not all, of the clocks and watches that left his
Annapolis workshop. The works of the tall case clock in question can be further attributed to Faris’s own hand, as it includes a complex addition of a moon dial (fig.
11).150 A moon dial is designed to show the shape of the moon as it appears in the sky, while also displaying the Lunar Calendar. This costly addition to the more typical eight-day clock would have required the expertise of a highly skilled clockmaker. It seems unlikely that William Faris would have delegated the creation of such a complicated and expensive piece to an apprentice or enslaved laborer. However, a closer look at its design and construction—especially when compared with other tall
149 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 13.
150 This clock is also the only surviving Faris moon dial to survive with Faris’s mark and its original case. Letzer and Russo, “Clockmaker and Silversmith,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 54.
44 case clocks attributed to Faris’s shop—provide insight into the ways in which Faris’s enslaved silversmith might have contributed to the production of this object. While the silversmith enslaved by Faris would not have taken part in construction of the works, clockmakers also “used skills common to silversmithing in making the silvered chapter rings and engraved disks (or bosses) in the tympanum area, as well as the cast spandrels in most dials.”151 The spandrels on the face of the tall case clock in question are identical to at least two other Faris clocks, both made ca. 1760, indicating that the spandrels on all three clock faces were cast from the same mold.
Like many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century silversmiths, the man enslaved by William Faris may have also worked as an engraver. Thomas Sparrow, a journeyman in Faris’s shop, went on to engrave John Shaw’s paper labels, Maryland’s colonial currency, and images printed in the Maryland Gazette, where printers Anne
Catherine and Jonas Green also enslaved men and women who likely worked in the printing trade.152 The detailed rococo engraving around the tympanum, featuring botanical imagery and C-scroll designs, may well have been executed by the enslaved
151 Jane Webb Smith, “Clock and Watchmaking in Maryland,” in Goldsborough and Harper, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Maryland Silver, and Letzer and Russo, “Clockmaker and Silversmith,” in Letzer and Russo, eds. The Diary of William Faris, 51.
152 Caitlin Galante-DeAngelis Hopkins, “Pompe Stevens, Enslaved Artisan” Common Place 13, no. 3 (Spring 2013) and Laura June Galke, “Societal Change on a Household Level: A Quantitative Spatial Analysis of the Green Family Print Shop Site,” in Mullins and Warner, eds. Annapolis Pasts: Historical Archaeology in Annapolis Maryland, 169-189.
45 silversmith working in Faris’s shop (fig. 11). If the young silversmith Faris enslaved was literate, he may have even engraved his master’s name—reading, “William Faris /
Annapolis”—on the plate placed inside the chapter ring, though he did not have to be literate to trace or copy the signature from elsewhere.153 The silversmith owned by
William Faris is only one of countless artisans whose identities have been hidden beneath the marks and labels of their enslavers. Like William Faris, both John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm were enslavers. Close reading and interpretation of several surviving archival sources, including wills, property records, and tax lists, make clear that the cabinetmakers, too, exploited enslaved labor throughout their careers.
“Shaw & Chisholm… CABINET and CHAIRMAKERS”
John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm’s first of two partnerships lasted for four years prior to the Revolution, from 1772-1776. Shaw had been in Annapolis since the early 1760s, and was still engaged with the James Brice House construction project when he first appeared in city records as a cabinetmaker in 1771.154 Shaw scholars suspect that his partnership with the slightly older Chisholm, a fellow Scot and established cabinetmaker since the mid-1760s, was due in part to a lack of supplies, workshop space, and other capital that would have been necessary for operating a
153 E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America (Cambridge: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 241-72.
154 Provincial Court (Judgement Record), 1770, MSA S551-85, vol. DD 17, f.75 and f.320, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
46 cabinetmaking business alone.155 It is hard to know whether Shaw and Chisholm knew each other or had mutual connections across the Atlantic in Scotland, but it is likely that they both trained there rather than in England. As Alexander Lourie notes, “case pieces bearing Shaw’s [and Chisholm’s] label show a closer affinity to comparable forms from Edinburgh and other Scottish cities than to those produced in London.”156
The pair “banded together to form the largest shop in the city… catering to middle- level and elite patrons, Shaw and Chisholm… offered the widest range of services, and even collaborated with other local artisans” like William Faris.157
The first mention of Shaw and Chisholm’s partnership comes not from the pair themselves, but from a musical instrument maker named Joshua Collins. Collins, who arrived in Annapolis from Manchester, England, advertised in the Maryland Gazette to
“acquaint the Publick, that he has commenced the said Branches of Business, at
Messrs. Shaw and Chisholm’s Cabinet Shop.”158 It is telling that Collins’s advertisement did not mention the location of Shaw and Chisholm’s shop, suggesting
155 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 13-35.
156 Alexander Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” Chipstone, American Furniture 2006 online, http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American-Furniture-2006/. 157 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
158 Joshua Collins, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, February 15, 1773, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
47 the cabinetmaking duo were so well-known that newspaper readers knew where to find them.159 Unlike William Faris, Shaw and Chisholm rarely advertised during their first four-year partnership. In fact, between 1772 and the end of their partnership in
1776, the pair posted only three advertisements in the Maryland Gazette. In the first advertisement published on May 6, 1773, the pair marketed themselves as “Cabinet and Chairmakers, in Church Street, near the dock.”160 Instead of advertising their own wares, Shaw and Chisholm instead posted to share their “neat and general assortment of Joiners and Cabinetmakers tools,” including utilitarian “joiner planes; double iron’d drying and smoothing ditto [planes],” and more decorative “ogee, quarter round, square,” and “beed planes with box edges.”161
The next advertisement for Shaw and Chisholm was not published until April
1775. As in their first, the pair opted out of describing the many furniture forms available on commission and instead focused on recently imported goods, this time “A
QUANTITY of mahogany, in logs, plank, and boards, and a variety of looking-glasses in Mahogany frames.”162 Likewise in 1776 Shaw and Chisholm announced “a quantity
159 Joshua Collins, Maryland Gazette, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
160 John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, May 6, 1773, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
161 John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm, Maryland Gazette, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
162 John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, April 13, 1775, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
48 of fine Jamaica brown sugar” for sale at their shop.163 It is possible that the pair, who
Lu Bartlett refers to as “leaders in the cabinetmaking community,” felt that their reputation and work-load were strong enough to forgo regular advertisements in the
Maryland Gazette.164 There would have been no shortage of work for two talented cabinetmakers in pre-Revolutionary Annapolis, but because no account books survive for John Shaw or Archibald Chisholm, measuring the output of furniture from their shop is difficult. However, surviving pieces of the pair’s earliest furnishings, the ledgers of their customers, and the accounts of other Annapolis artisans provide an opportunity to recover the full spectrum of work conducted in their shop and thus to explore their deployment of enslaved labor.165
The earliest labeled and dated piece produced in Shaw and Chisholm’s shop is the top half of a secretary bookcase in a private collection.166 The case is typical in material and style for early Annapolis furniture: instead of mahogany and mahogany veneers—which would dominate Shaw’s later work—the bookcase is made of locally
163 John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, July 25, 1776, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
164 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 14.
165 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 15.
166 Elder and Bartlett, “Exhibition Catalogue,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 56.
49 available woods: black walnut with secondary woods of tulip poplar and southern yellow pine.167 The bookcase is built in the neat and plain style, common among the
Anglo-American gentry in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake, emphasized “the same use of clean lines, minimal ornamentation, and classical proportions that characterized much British architecture.”168 Though only few of the pair’s earliest pieces survive, it is likely that most of them followed the styles and materials popular in the
Chesapeake. By 1775, the pair built a “Mahogany Missippy Table Cover’d with flannel & Green Cloth with a Sett of Ivory Balls for Ditto,” (a billiard table) for John
Cadwalader, Edward Lloyd’s brother-in-law, from Philadelphia.169 The same year,
Shaw and Chisholm had received one of their first commissions for the Maryland
State House, making “a Pine Bookcase with 3 Drawers Piegeon Holes and Sliding
Partitions” for the Loan Office.”170 Surviving records of Shaw and Chisholm’s cabinetmaking activity thus indicate a wide variety of forms for a wide variety of customers.
167 Elder and Bartlett, “Exhibition Catalogue,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 56.
168 Chipstone, “The Neat and Plain Style in the Chesapeake,” Southern Furniture, Chipstone Online, http://www.chipstone.org/html/SpecialProjects/CWSF/cwsf- 06NandP.html.
169 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 15.
170 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 15.
50 In addition to producing their own furniture, Shaw and Chisholm’s shop would have been busy with repairs for pieces made elsewhere. One of Shaw and Chisholm’s earliest documented commissions came from none other than James Brice, who engaged the pair in 1772 for several repairs, including:
To putting a new toprail on a Mahogany Chair 0… 5… 0 To a Brids Cage with 2 Apartments 0… 15… 0 To Mending the Claw of a Table 0… 1… 0 To new Stocking a Gun 1… 0… 0 To Mending a Tea Table ⅙ a new Ketch for Ditto 2/ 0… 3… 6 To Mending a Mahogany Chair 0… 1…6171
Like most wealthy Annapolitans in the mid-eighteenth century, James Brice’s home was furnished primarily with pieces from England and Philadelphia.172 It is likely that the mahogany chairs, claw-foot table, and tea table Brice hired Shaw and Chisholm to repair were imported from Philadelphia or England, meaning that Shaw, Chisholm, and the journeymen, apprentices, and enslaved artisans that worked in their shop were familiar with the best of English, Philadelphian, and vernacular Chesapeake eighteenth-century craftsmanship and construction. Though Shaw and Chisholm accepted commissions and repairs for larger furnishings like secretaries, tea tables, bookcases, and suites of chairs, the two also engaged in fashioning and fixing a variety
171 Receipt, Brice-Jennings Papers, MS. 1997, folder 1762-1831, Manuscripts Division, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland.
172 Alexandra Alevizatos, “Procured of the best and most fashionable materials: the Furniture and Furnishings of the Lloyd Family, 1750-1850” (M.A. Thesis, Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, 1999).
51 of other wooden objects, such as ballot boxes, doors, tea caddies, rulers, knife boxes, money drawers, and caskets.173
Shaw and Chisholm likewise sold an impressive array of imported goods. As their few advertisements from the early 1770s indicate, their shop on Church Street was stocked with carpenter’s tools, English mirrors, cuts of mahogany, and Jamaican brown sugar, among many other goods imported from Europe and the Caribbean.174
Shaw and Chisholm’s shop sat at an advantageous location on Church Street, only a short walk from the docks, warehouses, and the city’s Market House where goods were shipped and received, and sold to eager consumers in Annapolis. As noted by Lu
Bartlett, “the British officials stationed in Annapolis enjoyed an elegant and luxurious style of living that was emulated by the wealthy planters who were drawn to the town as the social, cultural, and economic center of Maryland as well as its political hub.”175
The Chippendale clock case built in the shop of Shaw and Chisholm is a high- style object that was created during a period of incredible productivity. Though the
173 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 14.
174 John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, May 6, 1773, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers; John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, April 13, 1775, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers; John Shaw and Archibald Chisholm, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, July 25, 1776, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
175 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 13.
52 case is not dated to the year, the aforementioned activities of Shaw and Chisholm during the period of their first partnership—making commissioned pieces, repairing
English and Philadelphian furniture, selling imported goods, and training apprentices—suggests “their roles as both artisans and entrepreneurs,” and indicates that they did not work alone.176 Scholars have identified several of Shaw and
Chisholm’s apprentices and journeymen throughout the 1770s and 1780s, but little work has been done to reveal the presence of enslaved artisans in their shop. While there are no records that indicate how many men, women, and children Shaw and
Chisholm enslaved from 1772-1776 when the tall case clock was built, later records provide opportunities to read back in time and hypothesize about the activities of the people they held in bondage. Federal Direct Tax records from Annapolis show that in
1798 Shaw and Chisholm enslaved six and seven individuals, respectively, seven of whom were between the ages of twelve and fifty and therefore taxable.177 John Shaw’s
1829 will provides further insight. At his death, John Shaw enslaved six men, women, and children who he would divide among his six living children and one grandson.
Though Shaw’s will did not mention the trades or skills of those he enslaved, it is likely that two young men, one named James, the other named Henry, were either
176 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
177 1798 Federal Direct Tax of Maryland, MSA SM 56, M3468 Anne Arundel County, Volume 729, Maryland State Archives Online.
53 training to be cabinetmakers or already experienced working in Shaw’s shop. Rather than will one of his three enslaved men to each of his three sons, Shaw bequeathed
James and Henry to his son George and grandson John Franklin, two Shaw family members who also worked as cabinetmakers, suggesting James and Henry’s training and previous work experience.178
Enslaved artisans working in the shops of Shaw and Chisholm or William
Faris likely completed tasks similar to apprentices in the first years of their training and indentured servants.179 It is unlikely that Shaw or Chisholm—already well- established artisans in their own right by the mid 1770s—would have taken the time to train an enslaved worker to be a master cabinetmaker. However, enslaved men and boys working in the cabinetmaker’s shop still needed knowledge of tools, materials, and regional styles and construction techniques. Scholars have struggled to identify the work of individual artisans working in John Shaw’s shop, noting that “it is difficult
178 Will of John Shaw, Chancery Court Records, Chancery Papers, MSA S5512-7787, Folder #7788, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
179 Several scholars have written on the tasks and expectations of apprenticed and indentured cabinetmakers, including Elder and Bartlett in John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” and Robert D. Mussey Jr., The Furniture Masterworks of John and Thomas Seymour (Salem, Mass.: Peabody Essex Museum, 2003). MESDA’s ‘Black and White All Mix’d Together: The Hidden Legacy of Enslaved Craftsmen expands on these ideas with the inclusion of several objects produced in workshops with enslaved artisans, noting that enslaved artisans were sometimes trained alongside apprentices. See “Corner or Commode Chair,” https://mesda.org/exhibit/corner-commode-chair/.
54 to attribute specific structural features and decorative elements to a particular hand.”180 Much of this comes from the shop’s reliance on designs and patterns created by Shaw himself. Aside from the use of design templates in creating new furnishings, enslaved artisans working in Shaw’s shop would have also been familiar with furniture from England, Philadelphia, and, increasingly, Baltimore, as clients hired the shop to conduct repairs.
Some journeymen working in John Shaw’s shop were afforded the rare opportunity to sign pieces of furniture they constructed. Rather than signing their full names, the journeymen usually signed their initials and the date atop the standardized label Shaw put on most of his pieces (fig. 12). The journeymen granted this privilege did so to “attest to their prominent roles in the construction of pieces, even though they were sold as products of Shaw’s shop,” and were almost certainly the product of several hands.181 Though not all sets of initials present on Shaw labels have been identified, it is unlikely that any represent the work of an enslaved cabinetmaker.
Journeymen signing their own pieces often did so as an act of autonomy, a way to
180 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
181 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
55 showcase their own skill and “lay a foundation” for future patronage, and perhaps even to secure payment for work completed.182
Though they were unlikely to sign or be credited for their work, the tasks of enslaved artisans were likely similar to those of apprentices. Like apprentices, enslaved artisans working in Shaw’s shop may have sawn or planed wood, worked from patterns to construct drawers, legs, or feet, transported raw materials from the docks in Annapolis or Baltimore, or delivered finished goods to clients’ homes. The enslaved cabinetmakers and silversmiths who likely built the tall case clock attributed to Shaw, Chisholm and Faris are hidden beneath shop labels, receipts, and account books, privileging the recognizable names of master craftsmen over the many artisans—bound and free—whose forced collaboration built the material world of
Annapolis’s Golden Age.
182 Without surviving account books from John Shaw’s workshop, it is hard to know whether or not journeymen initialed pieces in order to secure payment, though this practice was done in workshops elsewhere. Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American-Furniture-2006/, and Mussey Jr., The Furniture Masterworks of John and Thomas Seymour, 61.
56 Chapter 3
STATE PATRONAGE AND WORK AT THE CAPITOL, 1770-1829
“one good and Commodious House to be called the Stadt House”
As free and bound artisans built the James Brice House and labored in the workshops of William Faris, John Shaw, and Archibald Chisholm, another, larger city project competed for their time and attention. The Maryland State House, neglected and on the verge of collapse, desperately needed rebuilding.183 So ruinous was the state of Maryland’s capitol building by the 1760s that it drew the attention of visitors to the city. Writing from Annapolis on May 25, 1766, Thomas Jefferson quipped that
“the old court-house, judging from its form and appearance, was built in the year one.”184 Three years later, traveler William Eddis echoed Jefferson’s sentiment, noting that the State building “by a strange neglect, is suffered to fall continually into decay.”185 By 1770, the legislature agreed to raze the building and devote 7,500
183 When referring to the Maryland State House any time before 1772, I am referring to the second Maryland State House. The first, built in 1695, was destroyed by fire on October 17, 1704. The second was built between 1706 and 1707 and was derelict by the 1760s. For more on the earlier State House, see Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland at Annapolis.
184 Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Page, May 25, 1766, transcribed in Founders Online, National Archives https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01- 02-0012, and Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland at Annapolis, 16.
185 Aubrey C. Land, ed. Letters from America: William Eddis (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), 11-12, and Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland at Annapolis, 16.
57 pounds sterling to its reconstruction.186 On June 20, 1771, the legislature granted merchant Charles Wallace the contract to supervise the State House’s construction.187
Patronage from the state government played an important role in both supporting Annapolis’s artisan community and deepening their entanglement with enslaved labor. Curator Alexander Lourie explains that contracts from local and state government “placed greater emphasis on political loyalty than the lowest bid,” a custom that would continue into the mid-nineteenth century.188 That government officials almost always chose Annapolis artisans rather than those from Baltimore
(despite lower prices for labor and materials in Baltimore) suggests that “government officials were loyal to local craftsmen and may have recognized that the city’s artisan community would collapse without public patronage.”189 Architects, cabinetmakers, carpenters, silversmiths and printers all relied on the patronage of the state, but tavern and boarding house owners, merchants, and shopkeepers also relied on the regular presence of government officials, their families, and their enslaved and servant staffs.
186 Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland at Annapolis, 81.
187 Morris L. Radoff, The State House at Annapolis (Annapolis: Published by the Hall of Records Commission, 1972), 7.
188 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
189 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/, and Rockman, Scraping By.
58 Thus, it was likely Charles Wallace’s political and financial connections and available enslaved labor pool—rather than any architectural or mechanics’ training—that landed him the first state house construction contract.190
Though construction initially forged ahead under Wallace, arguments over building materials, a destructive strike of lightning to the capitol dome, and the arrival of British troops in 1777 thwarted many of his goals, leading him to resign his position as undertaker in 1779.191 The first phase of construction under Wallace was productive, but “his nerves and his finances were equally nonviable,” and his leadership ultimately did not result in the building’s completion.192 However, it was during this first period of construction that Wallace hired local artisans including John
Shaw, Archibald Chisholm, and William Faris to construct and repair various furnishings for the building. The earliest known order from Shaw and Chisholm, consisting mainly of imported hardware rather than furniture, hints at the capitol’s unfinished state:
1 doz brass Tea Chest Locks & Escutions 1 doz brass Bottle Case do 3 doz plain Drawer handles 3 doz Ornament do
190 While records for the 1770s do not survive, the 1800 and 1810 censuses list eleven and then fourteen enslaved individuals in Charles Wallace’s household. Censuses, Anne Arundel County, 1800-1810, in Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/.
191 Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland at Annapolis, 85.
192 Radoff, The State House at Annapolis, 7.
59 6 Gro very Small window Curtain rings 1 Gro Small Box pullies 6 Setts Baggamon men Inch & 1/2 diamiter 1 doz pr Iron Hooks & Eyes for Joining Tables 3 doz Box Escutions 3 doz Cupboard do 2 doz very Small Escution Thread 2 doz large do 2 doz larger do 4 doz Spanish Skins for Chair bottoms 6 pr Clock Spring ea 10 Inches long 2 Setts brass quadrants & Ketches for Desk Drawers193
Since this first commission from the State in 1774, John Shaw—and, by extension, the hired and bound members of his household—became increasingly involved with projects large and small at the State House and other government properties. From furnishings to imports to repairs, the material needs of the State kept John Shaw busy and continuously employed for nearly fifty years.194
Charles Wallace’s 1779 resignation brought construction to a halt for several years, but the State House continued to serve as a nexus between free, indentured, and enslaved artisans. Of those no longer employed on the State House project, many must have been excited by the prospect of Annapolis becoming the national capital, a move that would bring political, social, and economic opportunity to the city. Though
Congress sat in many cities (including Baltimore) during the Revolutionary War, the
193 Wallace, Davidson, and Johnson Order Book, 1774, transcribed in Radoff, The State House at Annapolis, 14.
194 For more on John Shaw’s varied work for the state, see Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis.
60 surrender of the British at Yorktown in 1781 motivated delegates to contemplate a permanent seat for the federal government. Discussions regarding America’s new national capital came to a head in June of 1783, when nearly four-hundred Continental
Army soldiers staged a mutiny at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, demanding payment for their service and threatening members of the Confederation Congress.195
Because the national government could only exercise control over the military in times of war, Alexander Hamilton, charged with negotiations, could only turn to
Pennsylvania’s state militia for protection. Faced with the realization that the national government would be left defenseless in Philadelphia, Congress moved south, settling first in Princeton, New Jersey before arriving in Annapolis.
Though Annapolis would not become the permanent seat of government, news of Congress coming to Annapolis, even temporarily, came at a crucial moment.
During and immediately after the War for Independence, Baltimore began to flourish up the Chesapeake River. With a deeper port and closer proximity to the state’s grain stores, many of Maryland’s wealthiest citizens fled the capital city and moved north.
For the artisans who lost customers in droves, the patronage of the state became increasingly coveted. While artisans sought out state-sponsored projects before the
Revolution, the economic downfall that followed the war meant that “the only
195 For more on the Philadelphia Mutiny of 1783, see Kenneth R. Bowling, “New Light on the Philadelphia Mutiny of 1783: Federal-State Confrontation at the Close of the War for Independence,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 101, no. 4 (October 1977).
61 consistent source of work [for artisans in Annapolis] remained that connected to the
State House and state government.”196
“Flagg made by Mr. Shaw… for the President of Congress”
On October 23, Maryland Congressional delegates James McHenry and Daniel
Carroll notified city officials of Congress’s plans to take up residence in Annapolis.197
With one month to prepare for, at most, fifty-seven delegates (plus family members, servants, slaves, and other government officials) the city was electrified with action.
John Shaw and the artisans, apprentices, journeymen, and indentured and enslaved men and women working with and for him would have been among the busiest. As an unofficial caretaker of the State House, it was Shaw’s responsibility to ensure that the seat of government was presentable, clean, and adequately furnished, lit, and heated for Congress. Additionally, Shaw’s purview would have extended over the preparation of the Governor’s Mansion—the confiscated home of Maryland’s last Royal
Governor, Robert Eden—which would be used to house Congress’s President,
Pennsylvanian Thomas Mifflin, during the congressional session.198
196 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
197 Jane W. McWilliams, Annapolis, City on the Severn: A History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 106-107.
198 Michelle Fitzgerald, “Confiscating the Castle: The Construction of Loyalist Identity in Governor Robert Eden’s Annapolis House,” (Master’s Thesis, University of Delaware, 2017).
62 Two weeks prior to Congress’s November 26 arrival date, Governor William
Paca requested that his Council purchase the necessary supplies “to make a pair of colours for the State” (fig. 13).199 Fabricating the flags, which Governor Paca wanted raised at the State House and Governor’s Mansion to signal the national government’s presence in Annapolis, would be no small task. Each flag would measure nine by twenty-three feet, and with only two weeks to design and construct them, Governor
Paca and his Council needed an artisan they could trust. The state ultimately paid
“Messrs. C. and R. Johnson of Baltimore” for “2 pieces of red bunting, 2 ditto white bunting, 19 ½ yards blue ditto,” and entrusted John Shaw with the time-sensitive commission.200
As a long-time friend and patron, it is understandable that Governor Paca thought John Shaw was the best person to undertake such a project.201 However, Shaw himself seems unlikely to have had the skill or experience necessary to manufacture the flags that now bear his name. Though flag-making may seem a simple task and artisans of all kinds advertised their sale in early America, Marla Miller’s Betsy Ross and the Making of America demonstrates that “no artisans supported themselves by making flags alone,” and that in colonial Philadelphia, the “most significant flag
199 Receipt, Maryland State Papers, (Scharf Papers) MSA S1005-94-14068, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
200 Receipt, Maryland State Papers, MSA S1005-94-14068, Maryland State Archives.
63 makers” were often women trained in upholstery.202 Though upholstery and cabinetmaking sometimes went hand-in-hand, no advertisements placed by John Shaw in the Maryland Gazette indicate that he ever trained as an upholsterer. Alexander
Lourie argues that although public commissions related to the State House “provided the steadiest source of income for all mechanics,” the contracts “were by no means lucrative.”203 John Shaw was not a flag-maker by trade, and may have been handed the commission over one or more qualified artisans. It seems more likely, then, that
Governor Paca assigned such an important project to John Shaw not because he himself was qualified, but because of his available labor pool and experience with overseeing and managing artisans both bound and free.
Five years prior to the flag commission, John Shaw signed an indenture for nine year-old Jane Lewis, a seamstress apprentice.204 There wasn’t much to do for a seamstress in a cabinetmaker’s shop, but Jane—who was likely trained by John
Shaw’s wife, Mary—would have had no shortage of work to occupy her at home. By the time of the flag commission in 1783, Jane would have been fourteen years old and
202 Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America, 160-163.
203 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
204 Anne Arundel County Register of Wills (Orphans Court Proceedings), 1777-1779, MSA C125-1, MdHR 9524, p.11, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland, and Will of John Shaw, MSA S5512-7787, Folder #7788, Maryland State Archives.
64 completed five of seven years of her indenture.205 With five years of experience, she likely had the skills necessary to take on such a project. John Shaw’s 1829 will also mentions Deborah Tootell and Kitty Carroll, two enslaved women, who may have also been present in the Shaw household since the 1780s or earlier.206 While many of the decorative and furnishing textiles in the Shaw household were likely to have been imports, Jane, Deborah, Kitty, and any other women who may have been bound to
John Shaw would have worked to preserve and mend imported fabrics while making
“simple, everyday objects that… provided a thousand small comforts to men and women in eighteenth-century America.”207
Provided Jane, Deborah, and Kitty were indeed present in the Shaw household in 1783, they likely played significant roles in crafting the two flags commissioned by the Governor. They may not have had much say in the design, which, according to
Congress’s Flag Resolution of 1777, needed “thirteen stripes, alternating red and white,” with “thirteen white stars in a blue field representing a new constellation.” But their knowledge of and familiarity with the properties of various fabrics and stitching
205 Anne Arundel County Register of Wills, MSA C125-1, MdHR 9524, p.11, Maryland State Archives.
206 Will of John Shaw, MSA S5512-7787, Folder #7788, Maryland State Archives.
207 Gloria Seamen Allen, “Threads of Bondage: Chesapeake Slave Women and Cloth Production, 1750-1850,” (Ph.D. diss, George Washington University, 2000), 52-82; Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America, 51.
65 techniques made them—not John Shaw or William Paca—the experts.208 It is certainly possible that William Paca commissioned John Shaw specifically because he had procured flags for the state before. Marla Miller has demonstrated that “fabricating
[flags] did demand excellent sewing skills, knowledge of materials, and in some cases familiarity, too, with regulations that governed ships at sea” and military action on land.209 Flags were an “unremarkable and steadily required” category of textile goods in a seaport city like Annapolis, especially during the War for Independence, when standards, colors, ensigns, and jacks helped troops identify, locate, and communicate with each other on land and at sea.210
Depending on their purpose, flags could be made of silk, linen, or wool, and were sometimes assemblages of several different fabrics. The supply order placed by the Governor’s Council indicates that the material used to fashion the Annapolis flags was a type of worsted wool cloth with an especially loose weave known as bunting, which was “both lighter and stronger than other woolen cloths, and also unfurled pleasingly in the breeze.”211 If Jane, Deborah, and Kitty had not previously worked with bunting (or had not previously constructed so large a textile) the two weeks
208 Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America, 167.
209 Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America, 161.
210 Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America, 159-160.
211 Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America, 161.
66 available to them may have involved much trial and error. It seems unlikely, especially for Deborah and Kitty who would have had a range of household duties, that the women were relieved of any other work to focus on this task. Thus, a project that is often understood as an honor for John Shaw likely caused further strain on the women responsible for doing the work.
On such a tight schedule, there was little room for error. It seems unlikely that
John Shaw would have directly supervised the artisans to which he assigned this task, indicating instead that his wife Mary or daughters Mary and Elizabeth may have overseen the stitching.212 Historian Stephanie Jones-Rogers argues that “married women, their slaves, and their other assets made their husbands’ commercial endeavors possible and enabled slavery to thrive,” despite previous attempts by scholars to “flatly reject the idea that white married women could adeptly manage enslaved people.”213 Mary Cassels Shaw is no exception. While no surviving records indicate whether Mary—Shaw’s second wife—brought her own slaves into their marriage, as mistress of the household she managed the labor and activities of enslaved women and children working primarily in the home. It would have been
Mary, not John, who supervised, trained, and disciplined Jane Lewis, Kitty Carroll,
Deborah Tootell, and any other female servants who worked in the Shaw household.
212 Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America, 163.
213 Stephanie Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019), xii-xiv.
67 Because their work falls outside the traditional realm of craft production, literature of slavery is “nearly silent on female slave [and indentured servant] artisans.”214 Their work, found “especially in the textile crafts of spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing, and quilting,” has long been dismissed as unskilled, but knowledge of the materials and techniques used to create the two Annapolis flags tell a different story.215
Once completed, the two flags were raised in honor of Congress’s arrival in
Annapolis on November 26, 1783: one above the State House and captured in a 1794 watercolor by Cotton C. Milbourne, and the other above the Governor’s Mansion (fig.
14). The flag raised above the State House remained in place for the rest of the congressional session, and through the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1784 and
Annapolis Convention in 1786. It appears in several period sketches, prints, and paintings of the State House, and became as important to the landscape of the city as the capitol building itself. As Congressional delegates slowly trickled into the city, the flag atop the State House would have been among the first things they saw, a symbol of industry and hope for a new nation, but also a reminder of those excluded from the promise of America.
“…the stadt-house, necessary for the use of Congress”
214 Allen, “Threads of Bondage: Chesapeake Slave Women and Cloth Production, 1750-1850,” 1.
215 Allen, “Threads of Bondage: Chesapeake Slave Women and Cloth Production,” 32.
68 On December 19, 1783—less than one month after the congressional session in
Annapolis began—the sound of a cannon thundered through the city.216 For the first time since the beginning of the War for Independence, the rumble of the cannon served as a cause for celebration. Likely detonated by state armorer John Shaw, the cannon publicly announced the arrival of the most famous man in America.217 George
Washington’s arrival in Annapolis would have been thrilling for most, but likely meant a mix of excitement and dread for the free and enslaved artisans whose work provided the General, his entourage, and the city’s residents with the comforts and accommodations necessary to enjoy three days of celebrations. Not even Congress knew by December 19 whether Washington’s resignation would take the form of a public address, but the artisans and laborers within the State House’s orbit would have expected an increased workload with the General’s arrival either way.
Among those most frenzied by the noise of the cannon on the evening of
December 19th were tavern-keeper George Mann and the no less than five men and women he enslaved at his residence and hotel (where Washington would be staying) on Conduit Street (fig. 15).218 Though Mann and his enslaved staff spent the preceding
216 William S. Baker, Itinerary of General Washington From June 15, 1775 to December 23, 1783 (Philadelphia: J.P. Lipincott Company, 1892), 318-319.
217 John Shaw was appointed armorer for the state of Maryland in 1777 during the War for Independence. See Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis.
218 Census, 1800, Anne Arundel County, in Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/.
69 weeks busy with the wants and needs of other high-profile guests like Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison, the arrival of the General only upped the ante. But
Washington, of course, did not travel alone. One week earlier, when he bid farewell to his soldiers at Fraunces Tavern in New York, Washington traveled through Jersey
City, Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore, greeting well-wishers along the way who “cheered at word of his approach, and when he arrived… thrust letters and accolades and toasts at him.”219 Washington made this journey south with a “small entourage of fewer than a dozen men, including William Lee, a handful of his most trusted officers, and their slaves.”220 Indeed, surviving records from Washington’s stay in Philadelphia include payment to Thomas Craig for the board and lodging of five slaves.221
To attract such illustrious guests as Jefferson, Madison, and Washington,
George Mann’s tavern must have had quite the reputation in Annapolis and beyond.
Indeed, it could not have taken long for word of Mann’s fine establishment to spread, as he purchased the lot on Conduit Street only months before Congress’s arrival in the city.222 In an ironic twist, Washington, Jefferson, and the other government officials
219 Alexis Coe, You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington (New York: Penguin Random House, February 2020), 104.
220 Coe, You Never Forget Your First, 103.
221 Baker, Itinerary of General Washington, 319-320.
222 “Lloyd Dulany House Architectural Survey File, AA-437,” Maryland Historical Trust, https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/AnneArundel/AA-437.pdf.
70 who stayed in Mann’s tavern lodged in the confiscated home of exiled loyalist Lloyd
Dulany.223 The property and improvements occupied first by Dulany and then by
Mann were described in a 1761 advertisement in the Maryland Gazette as follows:
The Dwelling House now in the Occupation of Mr. William Woodward in Annapolis, and all the Ground adjoining thereto, which belonged to the late Mr. Woodward, with the Improvements (except what is leased to Mr. Couden and Mr. Chalmers). There is nearly two Acres of Ground lying on three Streets, in the most public Part of the City, has on it a very large genteel and convenient Brick Dwelling-House, a good Brick Kitchen and near Out-Room adjoining to it; convenient Out-Houses, and genteel Garden, besides a separate Tenement, that may be rented out for 10 to 12 l. Sterling, and a Year's Rent payable on Renewments...224
With no indication that Lloyd Dulany added or removed any structures once he acquired the property, it seems likely that this was the same arrangement purchased by
George Mann early in 1783.225 Later records reveal that the dwelling house contained
“three large dining rooms on the first floor, a sitting room, eight lodging rooms on the second floor, excellent garret-rooms for servants,” and that the original property included “an excellent kitchen and wash house, stable sufficient for fifty horses… also
223 “Lloyd Dulany House,” Maryland Historical Trust, https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/AnneArundel/AA-437.pdf.
224 Mary Woodward, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, December 16, 1797, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers. My own emphasis. “Lloyd Dulany House,” Maryland Historical Trust, https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/AnneArundel/AA-437.pdf.
225 “Lloyd Dulany House,” Maryland Historical Trust, https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/AnneArundel/AA-437.pdf.
71 a fine Garden, also… a large and very good Ice House.”226 Unsurprisingly, George
Mann relied on slave labor to keep this sizeable enterprise running. While records prior to George Mann’s death in 1795 do not survive, the 1800 census lists five slaves and two free African Americans living in the household of his widow (and daughter of architect William Buckland) Mary Buckland Mann.227
Mann’s Tavern thus represents a unique space in the larger landscape of
Annapolis. Here, men and women enslaved by George Mann labored alongside men and women enslaved by Mann’s patrons. The arrival of George Washington, for example, also meant the arrival of Washington’s enslaved manservant William “Billy”
Lee. While Washington was George Mann’s—and, to a greater extent, the city of
Annapolis’s—esteemed guest, William Lee, like all enslaved servants, remained on duty. He may have stayed in one of the several garret-rooms in Mann’s tavern reserved for servants, but Washington, who had a “notable bond” with Lee, may have secured an alternate arrangement that kept Lee close at hand depending on the location of his room.228 Historians Mary Thompson and Erica Armstrong Dunbar have explored Washington’s relationship with—and reliance on—William Lee. Thompson
226 “Lloyd Dulany House,” Maryland Historical Trust, https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/AnneArundel/AA-437.pdf.
227 Census, 1800, Anne Arundel County, in Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/.
228 Dunbar, Never Caught, 76, and “Lloyd Dulaney House,” Maryland Historical Trust, https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/AnneArundel/AA-437.pdf.
72 notes that Washington “never forgot Lee’s loyalty,” after he served “faithfully for all eight years of the Revolution.”229 Dunbar echoes this sentiment, describing Lee as
“Washington’s number one slave, the valet who knew the president better than any other enslaved person at Mount Vernon.”230
William Lee was probably a comforting presence for Washington, who had not been home to Mount Vernon since the start of war eight years earlier. Erica Armstrong
Dunbar argues that Lee “would serve as Mount Vernon’s transplanted institutional memory, the reminder of a slow and steady Virginia past,” when Washington moved to New York at the start of his first Presidential term in 1789, but Lee performed the same function throughout the war and in Annapolis. 231 Though he is not traditionally described as an artisan, William Lee performed skilled emotional labor for
Washington every day, cementing a relationship “that no one else could build,” with the General.232 Lee, like enslaved artisans working in traditional craft trades, was well versed in elite notions of style, sociability, and gentility, expressed best by his ability to “perfect [his] duty of dressing his master’s hair and preparing his clothing.”233
229 Thompson, ‘The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,’ 53.
230 Dunbar, Never Caught, 25.
231 Dunbar, Never Caught, 29.
232 Dunbar, Never Caught, 76.
233 Though Lee did not work in a traditional trade at this point, he ultimately became a shoemaker. He is first listed as such in the Overseer’s Account Book November 5, 1790. See Lee’s entry in the Slavery Database at George Washington’s Mount
73 The morning after his arrival, Washington wrote to Thomas Mifflin “to inform
Congress of my arrival in this City,” and to ask “in what manner it will be most proper to offer my resignation, whether in writing or at an Audience.”234 Congress decided on a public ceremony with only three days’ time to prepare.235 Aware of their limited timeline, Congress selected Thomas Jefferson, Elbridge Gerry, and James McHenry to form a Committee for Procedures responsible for outlining the ceremony’s protocol, drafting President Mifflin’s response to Washington’s resignation, and delivering their plans in the form of a report to Congress one day before the resignation ceremony.236
Two days before Washington’s resignation, Thomas Jefferson sent his draft of
Mifflin’s response to Gerry and McHenry with a note that read “I send you the sketch, which I have been obliged to obliterate and blot after making what I intended for a fair copy...Perhaps this answer is too short,” which he blamed on “a want of time.”237
Vernon, https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/slavery- database/?purpose=&person=William+Lee&skill=&time=&owner=&gender=&locati on=, and Dunbar, Never Caught, 25.
234 Letter from George Washington to Thomas Mifflin, December 20, 1783. Transcribed on Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-12212.
235 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, Worthington C. Ford, et al., eds. (Washington, D.C., 1904-37), 818.
236 Journals of the Continental Congress, Ford, et al., eds., 818.
237 Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry and James McHenry, December 21, 1783, in Paul H. Smith ed., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2000). Emphasis my own.
74 Even without the words of the enslaved men and women who worked tirelessly to prepare Washington’s resignation ceremony, we can assume that they, too, wanted more time. The night before Washington’s resignation, George Mann’s enslaved chef prepared a meal for more than two hundred guests, which Delaware delegate James
Tilton lauded as “the most extraordinary [feast] I ever attended.”238 The Maryland
Gazette also reported on the dinner, noting that everything was “provided by Mr.
Mann in the most elegant and profuse stile.”239 As the bondpeople in George Mann’s household cleaned, decorated, cooked, and served for their elite company, those enslaved by John Shaw prepared the Maryland State House for a ball of “equally numerous” attendance.240 Shaw supplied ninety-five pounds of candles for the occasion, and, according to James Tilton, “to light the rooms every window was illuminated.”241 Lighting and snuffing candles in each window of the State House
238 Letter from James Tilton to Gunning Bedford Jr., 25 December 1783, Bryn Mawr College Library, Seymour Adelman Letters and Document Collection, Box 24.
239 Editor’s column in the Maryland Gazette, December 23, 1785, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
240 Letter from James Tilton, Bryn Mawr College Library, Seymour Adelman Letters and Document Collection, Box 24.
241 Maryland State Papers (Scharf Collection), MSA S1005-83-117, MdHR 19,999- 077-104, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland, and Letter from James Tilton, Bryn Mawr College Library, Seymour Adelman Letters and Document Collection, Box 24.
75 would have been a dirty, tedious, and potentially dangerous task. With such important company, there would have been no room for error or accidents.
All contemporary accounts indicate that the ball held in Washington’s honor was a great success. However, the main event was still to come. In addition to the quantity of candles used the night before, the state paid John Shaw on December 23,
1783 for one thousand nails, one hundred feet of plank, and “2 Gills of [spirit of] turpentine.”242 These materials were likely used to build and varnish a dais upon which Thomas Mifflin presided over the ceremony. Such a large object was likely built in situ rather than constructed in Shaw’s workshop and then moved to the capitol building.
John Shaw’s December 1783 bill provides further insight into the activities of enslaved and free artisans in his employ, as Shaw was paid by the state for one day’s labor of three men and two boys, earning him £1,10 and £0,10 respectively.243 There is of course no way to know whether the men and boys mentioned in Shaw’s bill were enslaved or indentured servants, but the fact that John Shaw was the one compensated for their labor indicates at least a degree of unfreedom. While Shaw is paid £1,10 for the total labor of three men, he charges the same amount for “my own Trouble and
242 Maryland State Papers (Scharf Collection), MSA S 1005-11773, 19,999-077-107, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
243 Maryland State Papers, MSA S 1005-11773, 19,999-077-107, Maryland State Archives.
76 Attendance.”244 His word choice is telling. While he explicitly refers to the labor produced by the men and boys as “work,” Shaw himself is paid for his “Trouble and
Attendance,” amplifying his role as overseer and purveyor of needed materials, not laborer or artisan. It was likely the men and boys Shaw supervised, then, who performed the hurried, high-stakes labor—like constructing the dais, lighting and maintaining candles and fires, and setting up seating arrangements—that made
Washington’s resignation possible.
The resignation was scheduled for noon on Monday, December 23, the day after two hundred guests filled the State House for a ball, meaning that all involved in preparing the space likely worked into the early hours of Monday morning. Like the previous evening’s dinner and ball, the ceremony was crowded. James Tilton observed that “the ladies occupied the gallery, as full as it would hold, the Gentn. crouded below stairs.”245 Among the ladies in the gallery was Molly Ridout, whose description of the resignation is the only known account from a woman in attendance. Molly wrote in a letter to her mother, “I went with several others to see Gen. Washington resign his Commission the Congress were assembled in the State House both Houses
244 Maryland State Papers, MSA S 1005-11773, 19,999-077-107, Maryland State Archives.
245 Letter from James Tilton, Bryn Mawr College Library, Seymour Adelman Letters and Document Collection, Box 24.
77 of Assembly were present as Spectators the Gallery full of Ladies.”246 Delegate David
Howell of Rhode Island similarly remarked on the occasion’s attendance, writing “the
State House was crowded with people of the first fashion who all partook in the occasion.”247
“To be contracted for… the necessary repairs to be made to the Stadt-house”
The Congressional session in Annapolis temporarily brought life back into a declining postwar city, but also meant that construction on the Maryland State
House—still not completed since Charles Wallace’s resignation in 1779—was significantly delayed. As elite Annapolitans continued to leave the city for Baltimore, so too did many of the artisans and laborers who facilitated their way of life.
Subsequent labor shortages caused Treasurer of the Western Shore Daniel St. Thomas
Jenifer and chief architect (and Wallace’s replacement) Joseph Clark to advertise in the Maryland Gazette for “thirty journeymen carpenters” to help complete the
246 Mary “Molly” Ridout to Mrs. Anne Taster Ogle, January 16, 1784. Mrs. James N. Galloway and Mrs. Frederick G. Richards Collection, 1784, MSA SC 358-1-2, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
247 Letter from David Howell to William Greene, December 24, 1783, in Paul H. Smith, ed., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2000), 225.
78 project.248 Both men lamented the lack of laborers and their inability to hire workers who were willing to accept the minimal pay the government can offer.249
To be contracted for, The carpenters work of a new roof and Cover to the Governor's house, and also for the necessary repairs to be made to the dome and roof of the Stadt-house, both to be erected under the direction of Mr. Joseph Clark, architect; the designs with the necessary particulars, may be seen with the said Clark, or the intendant from the 25th of March next to the 25th of April following, on which day proposals will be received by DAN. of St. THO. JENIFER, Intendant250
Construction on the State House lagged behind as free laborers, often unable to support themselves on the salaries paid to them by the state, came and went. While no surviving documents provide a comprehensive record of the activities of enslaved laborers and artisans, they contributed to the construction and maintenance of the building. In November of 1779, “Negro Nathan” was paid two pounds and five shillings for cleaning rooms, lighting fires, and other various tasks in the State House, as was “Negro Mathew for making fire in the auditor's office.”251 With only this
248 Joseph Clark, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, April 7, 1785, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
249 In a letter dated June 3, 1785, Joshua Botts, a carpenter hired to work on the State House wrote “We Git one Dollar a Day” and that “Mr Clark the Master Workman wants more Hands if they will take it.” MSA T68, Miscellaneous Papers, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
250 Radoff, The State House at Annapolis, 17.
251 Auditor General Journal, MSA S 150-5, Peter Force Collection B-2, MSA SC 4391, page 464, Executive Papers, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
79 limited documentation, it is hard to know whether Nathan and Mathew were enslaved or free. Both men were paid directly for their services, which could indicate their status as free African Americans, but could also suggest that they were enslaved with the ability to hire themselves out and earn their own money. It is most likely that
Nathan and Mathew were two of many enslaved and free African Americans who labored in the capitol building, but that documentation of their work was not deemed worthy of saving throughout most government records due to perceptions of their skill and relatively small amounts paid for their labor.
State House architect Joseph Clark, like William Buckland and Charles
Wallace before him, exploited enslaved labor in his own family, indicating an attempt to replicate the labor system on the capitol’s construction project. The 1783 Federal
Direct Tax lists two enslaved individuals in the household of Joseph and Isabella
Clark.252 In a surviving letter written by Isabella Clark to her husband’s employers after relocating to Washington, D.C., she reflects on their life in Annapolis:
Know then, that for many years previous to my Husbands connection with you, I lived with him, my Children, my Neighbors, and Friends, in Love, Peace, Independence [sic] and Reputation; We possessed A House well Furnished and much valuable moveable Property, many Slaves to wait on us of my own raising-A Carriage and Horse to recreate us, A Store of Goods which Kept us in amusing employment, Money always in our coffers, Twelve thousand Dollars at Interest and many other recourses, that enabled us to keep
252 Annapolis 1798 Federal Direct Tax and Censuses, Anne Arundel County 1800- 1820, in Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/.
80 a Handsome and a Plentiful Board, which ever echoed the most Hospitable Welcome to all who were acquainted therewith…253
Isabella Clark, like Mary Shaw, is a reminder of white women’s complicity in perpetuating slavery in Annapolis. In her own words, she emerges not just as an equal partner in ownership of material and financial capital, but as mistress of the household, responsible for the “many Slaves to wait on us of my own raising.”254
By the time of Isabella Clark’s letter, John Shaw had replaced her husband as superintendent of the Maryland State House. Among Shaw’s first tasks was to create an inventory of all necessary repairs and additions to the building, a lengthy list including, for example, “New Covering the presidants Chair & 18 arm ditto,”
“Takeing down the Desks takeing up the Carpet,” and “repairing the Desks & fixing them up again,” problems that all indicated the significant amount of work left to complete the State House and its furnishings.255 In May of 1796, the State commissioned Shaw “to make for the use of the Executive in the Council Room Six arm Chairs of Mahogany with stuffed Bottoms covered with crimson Moriens,” and again in December of that year to make “twenty four handsome commodious chairs…
253 “Research Notes Relating to Use of Slave Labor at the State House,” compiled by Maryland State Archives staff and researchers, December 10, 2002, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland. Emphasis my own.
254 “Research Notes Relating to Use of Slave Labor at the State House,” Maryland State Archives. Emphasis my own.
255 Radoff, The State House at Annapolis, 26-27.
81 for the accomodation of the Senate,” among several other large orders (Fig. 16).256
During the same period, Shaw was also hired by numerous high-profile citizens, including Edward Lloyd V, who paid Shaw for several furnishings for his plantation office at Wye House.257
“The State… in account with William and Washington Tuck”
The final two decades of the eighteenth century thus emerge as Shaw’s busiest period both at the Maryland State House and in the wider Annapolis community. It is during this period—spanning roughly from 1788 to 1804—that brothers William
(1774-1813) and Washington (1781-1859) Tuck joined John Shaw’s shop.258 The
Tuck brothers’ involvement with John Shaw was due in large part to the “political and
256 Maryland State Papers, Series Z, Scharf Papers, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland. Also see Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 22-23, and Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American-Furniture- 2006/.
257 See Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 16, and Alevizatos, “‘Procured of the best and most Fashionable Materials’: The Furniture and Furnishings of the Lloyd Family, 1750–1850,” 207, 383–85.
258 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
82 social connections” of their father, William Tuck Sr. (1741-1797).259 Tuck Sr., a painter-glazier who first advertised in the Maryland Gazette in 1762, was well- connected both in and around Annapolis.260 Like John Shaw, Archibald Chisholm, and William Faris, among others, William Tuck Sr. both commissioned wealthy
Annapolitans and augmented his income by working for the state. Any number of projects could have brought William Tuck Sr. into contact with John Shaw, but their first documented meeting comes in 1767, when both artisans appeared for the first time in the account books of planter James Brice.261 Like Shaw, Tuck Sr. worked on the construction of James Brice’s town house from 1767 to the building’s completion in 1774. The network of artisans and patrons Tuck Sr. cultivated in the earliest years of his career clearly helped his own children, who jumpstarted their careers with
Annapolis’s leading artisan in the “hub of the city’s mechanic community.”262
Scholars have noted the large body of apprentices, journeymen, and indentured servants in John Shaw’s workshop, and my previous chapter argued for the presence
259 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
260 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 32.
261 James Brice Account Books, in Ridout IV, Building the James Brice House, 218.
262 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
83 of enslaved artisans in this space as well. William Tuck, Jr. was among these journeymen, joining Shaw’s shop from 1795 to 1797, before his younger brother
Washington was bound to Shaw as an apprentice from 1798 to 1801.263 Although
Shaw employed and bound several workers in his shop, scholars have struggled to identify individual names. Curator Alexander Lourie has documented six labeled pieces of furniture made by the Tuck brothers in John Shaw’s shop, but the Tucks’ initials represent only two of eight pairs of initials left by journeymen and apprentices on Shaw furnishings. William and Washington Tuck are the best-documented cabinetmakers known to start their careers in John Shaw’s workshop.264 There, they would have learned that in the sleepy city of Annapolis, the only way for an artisan to make a living was through strong political and craft networks, diversification of income, and reliance on enslaved labor.
Lourie rightly argues that the Tuck brothers capitalized on the connections of their father, William Tuck Sr., and their master, John Shaw, to advance their careers in an economically declining Annapolis. More than ever before, Annapolis’s wealthiest families turned to Baltimore cabinetmakers (and, to a lesser extent, Philadelphians) to supply their material needs. As Baltimore continued to overshadow Annapolis as
263 Anne Arundel County Register of Wills, Orphans Court Proceedings, 1798, fol. 31, MSA C 125-8, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
264 I say start their careers and not be trained by Shaw because William started as a journeyman and may not have been trained by Shaw.
84 Maryland’s main port, cabinetmakers in Baltimore had quicker and cheaper access to materials. Likewise, artisans in Baltimore succeeded in forming trade organizations that “ensured them a political voice and access to work”—providing a level of job security and stability that would have been nearly unheard of for craftspeople working in Annapolis.265 The Tuck brothers, like the Annapolis artisans who came before them, instead relied on their connections to other craftspeople, to patrons, and, perhaps most importantly, to the politicians and government officials whose favor earned increased commissions.
Both William and Washington Tuck “understood the intricacies of private and public patronage and recognized the importance of the State House as a potential source of income.”266 William Tuck worked with Shaw during his most important state commission, a set of “24 Mahogany arm chairs, 10 Mahogany desks for the use of the Senate, and 1 neat Mahogany do for the president.”267 The President’s desk survives today in the State of Maryland’s collection, and was attributed to William
265 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
266 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
267 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
85 Tuck by Alexander Lourie, who linked the journeyman cabinetmaker with the piece’s initialed label, reading “W 1797 T” (fig. 12).268 Upon leaving Shaw’s employ,
William Tuck partnered briefly with cabinetmaker James Lusby before working independently. Significantly, William Tuck earned a series of commissions
“undoubtedly related to his association with Shaw,” from one of the region’s wealthiest planters, Edward Lloyd V of Wye House between 1803 and 1809.269
Washington Tuck similarly followed in the footsteps of his master. Washington worked for a period in Baltimore after completing his apprenticeship, returning to
Annapolis in 1806 to find “an economic environment disturbingly similar to the one he left behind four years earlier.”270 The state continued to provide the only stable work for artisans in the city. When the Governor’s council hired William Tuck to
“furnish the house of delegates with twenty-one convenient writing desks, with four separate drawers each, for use of the delegation from each county, and the delegation
268 Treasurer of the Western Shore, Journal of Accounts, 1797, fol. 48, MSA S 606-8, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland. For a detailed discussion of the furniture supplied for the senate in 1797, see Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 122–31, and Lourie “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American-Furniture-2006/.
269 Alevizatos, “‘Procured of the best and most Fashionable Materials’: The Furniture and Furnishings of the Lloyd Family, 1750–1850,” 207, 383–85.
270 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
86 from the city of Annapolis and Baltimore,” in 1807, the brothers began a partnership that would last until 1810.271
The Tucks’ furniture commission for the House of Delegates was just the beginning of a relationship between the Tuck family and the state that would last several decades. Like John Shaw, the Tuck brothers balanced public and private commissions and made use of connections among the craft community and in government, but they also likely learned from Shaw his own practice of managing enslaved labor, both in his shop and in his other varied duties throughout the city.
Manumission and census records indicate that both Tuck brothers acted regularly in slavery’s marketplace. The elder Tuck brother is listed as enslaving two individuals in the 1810 census, likely Nace and Delia, an enslaved man and woman whom Tuck granted gradual manumission upon his death in 1813.272 While the younger Tuck brother is not listed in the 1810 census, manumission records capture Ann and Sophia, two enslaved women manumitted by Washington Tuck in 1809 and 1811, respectively.273 Washington Tuck went on to enslave four women and two men in
271 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
272 Census, Anne Arundel County, 1810 in Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/.
273 Manumission Records, Anne Arundel County, in Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/.
87 1820, three women and one man in 1830, ten women in 1840, and nine women and girls and six men and boys in 1850.274
There is no way to definitively know what work Nace, Delia, Ann, Sophia, and the numerous other enslaved men and women enslaved by Washington Tuck into the nineteenth century completed. Nace, sixteen years old at William Tuck’s death in
1813, almost certainly worked in some capacity in the Tuck brothers’ cabinetmaking workshop during their partnership from 1807 to 1810.275 Delia, also enslaved by
William, and Ann and Sophia, enslaved by Washington, likely also performed various tasks that contributed to the brothers’ cabinetmaking business, including making deliveries of tools and materials and providing most of the domestic labor that allowed their enslavers to focus on their craft. The motivations behind Washington Tuck’s manumissions of Ann and Sophia in 1809 and 1811 are unknown, but likely had more to do with the amount of labor Washington needed on hand than any growing hesitations about the institution of slavery. The Tuck brothers ended their cabinetmaking partnership in 1810 and Washington was not appointed superintendent of the Maryland State House until 1820, perhaps indicating a period of decreased
274 Censuses, Anne Arundel County, 1810-1850, in Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/.
275 Census and Manumission Records, Anne Arundel County, 1810-1850 in Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Database, Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/.
88 profits and less need for labor.276 Indeed, Washington continued to buy and sell slaves until his death in 1859, evidenced by his fluctuating slave ownership in census records from 1820 to 1850, a period that saw steady employment from the state.
Washington Tuck served as superintendent of the state house from 1820 and
1829, received regular furniture and repair commissions between 1830 and 1838, and continued to garner “more contracts for work at the State House than any other
Annapolis artisan” in the first half of the nineteenth century. As superintendent, Tuck
“repaired doors and windows, did painting and plastering, replaced locks and shelves, built a woodshed for the treasury building, set up the state library, and provided carpets for the chambers of the house of delegates and court of appeals,” among various other tasks that Alexander Lourie calls “more mundane than artistic.”277 Each of these odd jobs required differing sets of skills and knowledge, that Tuck, like John
Shaw before him, likely arranged through the careful management of enslaved and free labor. While John Shaw watched James Brice manage time, materials, and labor during the construction of his town house from 1767-1774, so too did William and
276 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
277 Lourie, “‘To Superintend the Necessary Repairs’: The Careers and Work of William and Washington Tuck,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/564/American- Furniture-2006/.
89 Washington Tuck watch Shaw—then established as Annapolis’s most prolific artisan—in the 1780s and 1790s.
Whether John Shaw, William and Washington Tuck, George Mann, or Joseph
Clark, artisans and professionals who depended on the patronage of the state also depended on the reliability of an enslaved labor force. While the state of Maryland seems not to have purchased slaves directly, government officials hired craftspeople carefully, based not only on political allegiance, but on individual artisans’ abilities to balance public and private patronage and delegate tasks to enslaved and servant workers. It is no surprise that John Shaw appears in the records of the state as a supervisor rather than a worker by the turn of the nineteenth century. Shaw’s upward mobility is thanks in large part to his participation in the economy of slavery. His reputation—prolific both today and in his own lifetime—is thanks primarily to the labor of those he enslaved and the many others that he supervised, whether on the
Brice House project, during his time as a cabinetmaker, or as the superintendent of the
Maryland State House.
90 Chapter 4
CONCLUSION
John Shaw died at his home in Annapolis on February 26, 1829. At eighty-two years old, Shaw departed a city that was very different from the one he encountered as a young man in 1763. As an immigrant lacking the connections and capital necessary to immediately open his own shop, Shaw found himself in a city on the rise, working side by side—likely for the first time—with slaves. Throughout the early years of construction on John Brice’s town house, Shaw worked not as a master craftsman, but as a hired hand, performing menial carpentry work and manual labor primarily alongside enslaved, indentured, and convict servants. During this time, Shaw also received an informal education from his employer, James Brice, and master craftsmen like William Tuck, Sr. and Jubb Fowler, all of whom taught the upstart cabinetmaker what it would take to thrive in Annapolis: an ever-growing personal and professional network, diversified income, and the exploitation and management of unfree labor.
Indeed, John Shaw’s work for James Brice became the catalyst for his future professional success. Whether in the earliest years of partnership with fellow cabinetmaker Archibald Chisholm or when Governor William Paca entrusted him with the commission for a new American flag, it was John Shaw’s ability to mobilize the labor of men and women bound to him that contributed most to his success, especially as Annapolis’s economic promise dwindled into the nineteenth century. A glowing obituary posted in the Maryland Gazette described Shaw as “not only one of the best and most respectable inhabitants of this city, but… one of the most useful of them,”
91 highlighting his reputation throughout the city as a maker and a fixer, but obscuring the enslaved labor that made his usefulness possible.278 Such is the case with many of the surviving documents associated with Annapolis’s early artisans. While censuses, tax and land records, account books, and receipts reveal that artisans in Annapolis were usually enslavers, these records do little to identify and humanize the many men and women who labored in the city’s homes and workshops. While these records make the labor of enslaved artisans visible, only the records associated with John Shaw’s death reveal more about their individual identities, family relationships, and provide the opportunity to trace their lives, though only to a small extent, after their enslaver’s death. John Shaw’s will, written two months prior to his death in 1829, lists six individuals: John, Deborah Tootell and her children Ann and James, Kitty Carroll and her son Henry. His probate inventory, recorded nearly two months after his death, lists seven: Deborah, Kitty, John, James, Henry Gibson, Anna, and Henry Kennard.279
Shaw’s will helps us assemble at least partial family groupings: Deborah Tootell, James, and Ann (Anna), and Kitty Carroll and either Henry Gibson or Henry Kennard, but still leaves many questions unanswered. Was John the father of any of Deborah or Kitty’s children? Which Henry was the son of Kitty Carroll? Did Shaw purchase the other Henry in the months between drafting his will and dying? Could Deborah
278 Obituary of John Shaw, column in the Maryland Gazette, March 5, 1829, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
279 Will of John Shaw, MSA S5512-7787, Folder #7788, Maryland State Archives and “John Shaw Inventory, March 1829” transcribed in John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, ed. William Voss Elder III and Lu Bartlett (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1983), 171-172.
92 Tootell have been pregnant, and subsequently given birth, to the second Henry that appears in Shaw’s probate inventory? Were James and Henry Gibson, both labeled as “Boy” rather than “Child” in Shaw’s inventory, training to work as cabinetmakers? Were Deborah, Ann, James, John, Kitty, Henry Kennard, and Henry Gibson children or spouses of other men and women formerly enslaved by Shaw who had been sold, escaped, or died before his death in 1829? We may never be able to fully document the lives of those enslaved by John Shaw before his death in 1829, but we have enough evidence to wonder what the immediate aftermath of their enslaver’s death may have meant for them. Shaw’s will outlines two distinct family groups, the children of Deborah Tootell and the children of Kitty Carroll, but that specificity also foregrounds their forced separation. While
Deborah Tootell and her daughter Ann were willed to Shaw’s daughter Mary, Tootell’s son James was willed to Shaw’s son George, a cabinetmaker by trade who inherited the elder Shaw’s Annapolis workshop and established his own shop in
Washington, D.C.280 Shaw left Kitty Carroll to his daughter Elizabeth Franklin, whose husband Thomas Franklin took over the Shaw’s Annapolis workshop after George’s death in April of 1829.281 Shaw left Elizabeth and Thomas Franklin’s son, John, Kitty
280 Will of John Shaw, Chancery Court Records, Chancery Papers, MSA S5512-7787, Folder #7788, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
281 Sumpter Priddy and Ann Stuart, “Seating Furniture from the District of Columbia, 1795-1800,” Chipstone, American Furniture 2010 Online, http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/610/American-Furniture-2010/Seating-Furniture- from-the-District-of-Columbia,-1795%E2%80%931820.
93 Carroll’s son, Henry.282 Additionally, Shaw willed John to his son Thomas Shaw, with the order that Thomas “Should immediately after my death take possession of the said negro John so that he Should not be permitted to remain with the family or in Annapolis.”283 This unusual stipulation may imply ill-will or mistrust between Shaw and the enslaved man, who likely worked in some capacity in the cabinetmaking shop or at the State House, but may also imply Shaw’s fear that an enslaved artisan with a vast network of other enslaved, free black, and white craftspeople might easily run away if left in Annapolis. No matter his reasoning, John Shaw ensured with the stroke of a pen that the men, women, and children who lived together in his household were separated forever. Shaw’s children and grandchildren lived throughout the region, in Annapolis,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Frederick, the eastern shore, and Georgetown, presumably bringing those they enslaved with them as they moved from place to place. In addition to familial separation, Deborah, Ann, James, Kitty, Henry Kennard, Henry Gibson, and John were also physically removed from the familiar landscape of Annapolis. Scholars of material culture and consumption have focused on the movement of goods, regional tastes, and capital throughout early America and the Atlantic World. Indeed, John Shaw’s influence over the generations of craftsmen trained in his
Annapolis workshop contributed to the dissemination of objects and local styles throughout the region, and the height of his career came at a moment when
282 Will of John Shaw, MSA S5512-7787, Folder #7788, Maryland State Archives.
283 Will of John Shaw, MSA S5512-7787, Folder #7788, Maryland State Archives.
94 Maryland’s wealth and power moved from Annapolis to Baltimore.284 While those enslaved by John Shaw participated in the movement of goods, styles, and labor in and around early Annapolis, their enslaver’s death brought movement and separation that was much more immediate.
Wherever they went, those formerly enslaved by John Shaw experienced slavery differently than they did in Annapolis. As George Shaw moved between
Annapolis and Georgetown, James Tootell likely followed. He may have been comforted by the city’s booming African American population, one that he certainly would not have experienced in Annapolis.285 John was forced out of Annapolis for the eastern shore, where he likely performed agricultural work on a small farm or a plantation owned by Thomas Shaw, labor and a landscape that would have been unfamiliar to him if he spent his whole life in Annapolis. Kitty Carroll and her son
284 For the influence of John Shaw and other Annapolis cabinetmakers on furniture styles and forms in Baltimore and Washington D.C., see Sumpter Priddy and Ann Stuart, “Seating Furniture from the District of Columbia, 1795-1800,” Chipstone, American Furniture 2010 Online, http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/610/American- Furniture-2010/Seating-Furniture-from-the-District-of-Columbia,- 1795%E2%80%931820.
285 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 24-26, and Priddy and Stuart, “Seating Furniture from the District of Columbia, 1795-1800,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/610/American-Furniture-2010/Seating-Furniture- from-the-District-of-Columbia,-1795%E2%80%931820.
95 Henry stayed with the Franklin’s in Annapolis before leaving for western Maryland, where the towns of Frederick and Hagerstown were small but growing, and Germanic influences on culture and landscape would have been unlike anything Kitty and Henry ever experienced in Annapolis.286 While early American artisans, whether in
Annapolis, or Charleston, or Newport, always depended on the institution of slavery, enslaved artisans did not share universal experiences.
Upon his death, John Shaw willed the young James Tootell to his son George, but also his Annapolis home, workshop, store house, “warehouse and book binders room,” and “my mahogany book case which was made many years ago by myself.”287
Shaw left a sizable portion estate to George, his only son to follow in his footsteps as an artisan, effectively ensuring that George had the space, capital, and labor necessary to run a successful business in Annapolis—things the elder Shaw lacked upon his arrival to the city in 1763. Few objects associated with George Shaw remain, but surviving documentation hints at his own career trajectory and workshop practices.
George, trained in Annapolis by his father sometime before 1785, is listed in
Philadelphia’s city directory as a cabinetmaker from 1785-1791.288 Soon thereafter,
286 Bartlett, “John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis,” in Elder and Bartlett, eds. John Shaw: Cabinetmaker of Annapolis, 24-26.
287 Will of John Shaw, Chancery Court Records, Chancery Papers, MSA S5512-7787, Folder #7788, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland.
288 Philadelphia City Directory listings for cabinetmaker George Shaw, 1785-1793, transcribed in MESDA Craftsman Database.
96 George returned to Annapolis to work in the bookbinder’s trade, advertising “in all its variety, executed in the neatest manner.”289 George worked for a time as a cabinetmaker in Georgetown, where he developed a relationship with another
Maryland-born cabinetmaker and enslaver, William Worthington, Jr., and the two carried on John Shaw’s cabinetmaking business in the months between John Shaw’s death and the death of George soon after.290
A surviving letter book in the Maryland State Archives Special Collections was sold by George Shaw between 1814 and 1817 (fig. 17). Though the binding cannot be definitively attributed to George Shaw, the object reflects Shaw’s “discerning taste” as both dealer and artisan, and the fine craftsmanship and simple decoration may hint at his own practice.291 George Shaw’s work as a book binder began prior to his father’s death, and advertisements reveal that the elder Shaw worked closely with his son to market and sell his wares.292 The “book binders room,”
289 George Shaw, advertisement in the Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer, January 22, 1814, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
290 Priddy and Stuart, “Seating Furniture from the District of Columbia, 1795-1800,” http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/610/American-Furniture-2010/Seating-Furniture- from-the-District-of-Columbia,-1795%E2%80%931820.
291 R.M. Bartgis, “Bookbinders in Annapolis,” in Bookbinding in Early Maryland: Highlights from the William Spawn Collection, online exhibition (Annapolis: Maryland State Archives, 2010) https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/stagser/s1259/103/spawn_collection_website/html/case _2/colonies.html.
292 For example, advertisements posted in 1811 indicate that John Shaw and George Shaw sold wares out of each other’s shops. John Shaw, advertisement in the Maryland Journal, May 4, 1811, transcribed in MESDA Craftsman Database and John Shaw,
97 left to George after his father’s death shared space with the warehouse and store room, adding layers of complexity to our understanding of John Shaw’s cabinetmaking shop and suggesting that those enslaved by Shaw, like Jem who ran away from James Brice in 1793, were skilled across trades. Like James Brice’s townhouse, the tall-case clock produced in the workshops of John Shaw, Archibald Chisholm, and William Faris, and the many iterations of constructing and furnishing the Maryland State House, the letter book sold by George Shaw is a material reminder of the varied roles and experiences of enslaved artisans in early Annapolis.
To bring historical attention to the realities of life and labor in early Annapolis is not to say that highly skilled, connected, and entrepreneurially minded free artisans like John Shaw, William Faris, or even Charles Willson Peale are not worthy of scholars’ focus. It is only by understanding these men’s role as enslavers that we can fully grasp their actions as businessmen, investors, politicians, soldiers, fathers, husbands, employers, and that their successes and their legacies become clear. By widening our gaze to consider the lives and work of the artisans they enslaved, the artistic and architectural achievements of Annapolis’s Golden Age—and the survival of the city as it struggled in the decades after Revolution—speak to the skill, sacrifice, and unique experiences of the bondpeople who built the city on the Severn.
advertisement in the Maryland Republican, July 1, 1811, Maryland State Archives Digitized Newspapers.
98 FIGURES
Figure 1 Mr. Shaw's Blackman. Attributed to Moses Williams, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; made after 1802. Hollow cut silhouette on paper. Image courtesy of the Library Company of Pennsylvania. Permission pending, museum closed due to COVID-19.
99
Figure 2 The yellow outlined plot contains what were historically lots 94 and 103. The James Brice House still stands here. The yellow star indicates the Maryland State House, and the yellow rectangle indicates the city dock. City of Annapolis Zoning District Map: Zoning Map 52A. Department of Planning and Zoning. City of Annapolis, Maryland. 2016. This Image is in the public domain.
100
Figure 3 The James Brice House, 42 East Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1767-1774, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-247. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain.
101
Figure 4 Hammond Harwood House, 19 Maryland Avenue and King George Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1774, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-251. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain.
102
Figure 5 Chase-Lloyd House, 22 Maryland Ave and King George Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1769-1774, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-246. Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain.
103
Figure 6 William Paca House, 186 Prince George Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County MD. Built 1763-1765, photograph taken by the author in 2018.
104
Figure 7 John Ridout House, 120 Duke of Gloucester Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1764-1765, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-91. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain.
105
Figure 8 Charles Carroll House, Duke of Gloucester Street and Spa Creek, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1724, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-293. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain.
106
Figure 9 Spoon, tablespoon. Shop of Alexander Petrie, Charleston, South Carolina; 1742-1760. Silver. 2009.0003 Museum purchase with funds drawn from the Centenary Fund. Image Courtesy of Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library.
107
Figure 10 Tall case clock. Shops of John Shaw, Archibald Chisholm, and William Faris, Annapolis, Maryland; 1772-1776. Mahogany, mahogany veneer, pine, silver, brass, paint. 2004.08 Historic Annapolis, Inc. Photograph taken by the author in 2019.
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Figure 11 Detail, moon dial and engraving, tall case clock. Shops of John Shaw, Archibald Chisholm, and William Faris, Annapolis, Maryland; 1772- 1776. Mahogany, mahogany veneer, pine, silver, brass, paint. 2004.08. Image Courtesy of Historic Annapolis, Inc.
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Figure 12 John Shaw label. Printed by Thomas Sparrow and inscribed by Washington Tuck, 1797. Image courtesy of Hammond Harwood House Museum. Permission pending, museum closed due to COVID-19.
110
Figure 13 Modern reproduction of Shaw Flag, hanging from the dome of the Maryland State House. Blue, white, and red bunting. Photograph taken by the author in 2018.
111
Figure 14 Church Circle. Charles Cotton Milbourne, Annapolis, Maryland; 1794. Watercolor. P58, Donated by Zenith Brown. Image Courtesy of Hammond Harwood House.
112
Figure 15 Lloyd-Dulany House, 162 Conduit Street, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD. Built 1770-1780, photograph taken after 1933. Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS MD-277. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey. This image is in the public domain.
113
Figure 16 Senate President’s Armchair. Shop of John Shaw, Annapolis, Maryland; 1797. Mahogany, tulip poplar, and white oak. MSA SC 1545-0748. Photograph by Gavin Ashworth. Image Courtesy of the Maryland State Archives. Permission pending, archives closed due to COVID-19.
114
Figure 17 Front cover decoration of Governor’s Council Letterbook, Volume 1, Annapolis, Maryland. Sold by George Shaw between 1814 and 1817. Leather. Binding: Special Collections (William Spawn Collection), MSA SC 5797-1-175. Image courtesy of the Maryland State Archives. Permission pending, archives closed due to COVID-19.
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